What is the role of grief in contemporary societies, and what cultural or generational differences can we trace in our experiences of grief? The artist Eleni Tsompanidou examined these questions in her project A Miroloi of Life, the outcome of her residency at the ARTisBOOK Foundation during November/December 2020.

Taking as a starting point her own experiences with grief while also considering the marginalized position and the oppression of the grieving individual in our society, the artist's aim during her residency was to create a platform for a collective exploration of the topic.

At the beginning of the working period, Eleni placed an open call that invited the public to participate in a weekly mail exchange. The participants of this exchange had the opportunity to share and process their histories of grieving. In this way, the project facilitated as a platform for better understanding of the complexities of loss and grieving both on an individual and collective level and invited for a reading of grief not only related to death but also as a part of everyday life and human interactions, changes, loss of control and the passing of time, aspects very topical to the unstable contemporary situation created by COVID-19.

The mail exchange was an intense experience that challenged Eleni's perception. She realized that although grief is something individual it is also something we all experience in our life. The complexity and diversity of grief can many times result in it being unnoticed, dismissed, or pathologized. The artist hopes that having an open discussion about grief can reframe our approach and understanding of this important issue.