Iakovos Volkov: outskirts

Showing posts with label outskirts. Show all posts

Saturday, March 14, 2026

a discovery...

in an area where you wouldn't expect to find a place like this one. Almost not visible from any road. A factory of some kind that is painted with graffiti in few rooms of the entrance. Need to be visited again for sure, hopefully very soon...

Photos taken with a smartphone

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

a quick scout..

in an interesting place about 2 hours from Thessaloniki. It seems that is used from ''someone'' for their educational purposes. Very few graffiti pieces from previous years not anything recent. Would be a nice 3day trip to explore more of it and the surrounding area.

about this diary

I started painting graffiti on walls when I was 15 and living in Thessaloniki. Over time, my thoughts about art evolved. I began creating installations in deteriorating areas of the city, mainly in abandoned factories. Since moving to Athens in 2014, I have frequently been invited to participate in gallery and museum exhibitions. For these venues I created sculptures that were site specific, independent freestanding works or pieces that could be installed on a gallery wall.

Primarily I work with discarded things - plastic, clothes, textiles and everyday items are my basic materials nowadays. I see value in things overlooked by others. Flowing from my history as a graffiti artist, I began building word sculptures. More recently I have also explored working abstractly, building objects and installations focused on composition and materials.

I deeply feel one can create meaningful work from small, ordinary things found abandoned on the street. Carefully observing my environment and experimenting with discovered materials, I construct meaning from the discarded, meticulously reconfiguring what society has worn out and broken. I restore life into forgotten places with what I have saved, giving a reason to consider places no longer noticed. For me, this work is essential.