Art exhibition – Thekla’s World

Concept-Coordination- Curation
Jean Blanchaert

Support Team Milano
Irina Eschenazi Focsaneanu
Pim Bono Cosentino
Paolo Inghilleri

Thekla Iereidis passed away in July 2018 after having suffered from frontal lobe dementia for the last years of her life. She had gradually lost the ability to speak but not her ability or her desire to communicate. She began to draw but also knit and do embroidery. The themes of her art were childhood memories; her four sisters and her brother, priests standing before a church, olive trees, houses. Mainly, however, she drew female portraits which, according to the curator Jean Blanchaert, could be emotional self-portraits. «The expressions vary: surprise, fear, euphoria, sarcasm, modesty, determination, piety, joy, sorrow, nobility, genuineness». The important, awareness-raising, life-affirming message is that there is life after dementia.