Time Stands Still

Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin, Ireland, 2006

28 limited edition of 5, full colour prints
75cm x 50cm, mounted on 6mm formex
92.5cm x 66.2cm x 7cm framed in box type frames

This exhibition of digital photography brought together two congruous conflicts: The Easter Rising, Ireland, 1916 and the war and subsequent fall of Yugoslavia, 1991-1992.

While artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, in 2005, Elpida researched the connections and history of Ireland in relation to the history of her own country of birth, Macedonia. At the time, Macedonia was a country recently involved in ethnic and political conflict and was dealing with new notions of identity and boundaries; negotiating local, regional and international boundaries, encompassing ethnic, economic and social changes. Ireland went through similar shifts a century ago and is now a major European nation.

Elpida became particularly interested in the history of the Easter Rising (1916) and the history of the Kilmainham Gaol. Using digital photography and image manipulation, she explored the architecture of the Kilmainham Gaol Museum and found images with which to investigate these notions of identity, nationalism and cultural development.

The second part of the exhibition presented images of once beautiful landscapes in the Former Yugoslavia. In November 2005 she had revisited fourteen places in Former Yugoslavia where executions were known to have taken place (between 1989 and 2001). The names of many of these places resonated from news broadcasts and media reports at the time.