china

On September 2016, Tzeli Hadjidimitriou presented at The Zero Space Gallery  in the Bejing’s renown 798ArtDistrict the exhibition “Aura from the Island of Sappho”.The exhibition was a collaboration between Chinese poet Lan Lan and Greek photographer Tzeli Hadjidimitriou in honor of Sappho, the great poet of antiquity, and the mythic Orpheus. Lan Lan is the nom de plume of Hu Lanlan, born in 1967 in Yantai, Shandong Province, She is one of China’s most important lyric poets.Her work was introduced to Greek audiences at the 1st Athens World Poetry Festival in 2013.Writing for Cerise Press, Fiona Sze-Lorrain calls Lan Lan “a significant female poetic voice” in the “male-dominated Chinese poetry world today.”In World Literature Today, Canaan Morse says that Lan Lan’s poetry is immediately recognizable.”Her language is cool and clean and strong, like glacial ice. Her messages are intimate without being sentimental, bearing the sincerity of secrets. Her inimitable quality is the result of an adherence to simplicity and sympathy, as her poems speak directly to the reader and use white space as consciously as they do words.As part of the exhibition Lan Lan will present her latest collection of poems, “Sappho: A Loose Bouquet,” Inspired by ancient Greece and her trip to Lesvos island. Tzeli Hadjidimitriou is a fine art photographer, travel writer and the author of ten photography books, including the award-winning “39 Coffee houses and a barber’s shop.” She shows her work regularly in individual and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.“In the photographs of Greek photographer Tzeli Hadjidimitriou, we experience the island of Lesvos through its diverse “nature.”This natural diversity is above all due to the light -- not just the sunlight but also the light of the moon and the stars.In her compositions we can observe the diversity of the island’s lights and colors and gradually discover its powerful identity, its inexhaustible beauties and its hidden sensations.Her photographs of Lesvos are not simply a presentation of a beautiful landscapes:They invite us to hear the sounds of its waters, calm and stormy; to feel the heat of its earth, burnt by the sun; to gaze at its moonlight; and to feel the humidity of its forests.’Ulrike Weinholt, Lesvos the Island of Hidden Harmony.