In 2010, Dimitris Tsoumplekas is back in Greece, after living in Berlin for almost twenty years; this is when he initiates the photographic series Texas.
“Texas is a tavern in the northwest of Greece. Originally called Paradise, it was renamed Texas in the 1970s when a man drew his gun and killed two customers. His wife and her lover. The name of the place inevitably implies violence, the South and desolation.
Texas is a battleground of repatriation. Back in Greece in 2010, I felt confused. I had to rearrange this strange spectacle of people and places, and because I kept failing, I drifted into an observation of the small and large details of a messy life. Everything I noticed seemed to result from a battle with time, a battle with itself. Evidence of a desire for freedom bordering on destruction.
Texas is a work of mourning. Texas is a kind of farewell. The designation of the border. And the border, as perceived by Heidegger, “is not where something ends, but as recognized by the Greeks, the border is where something begins to unfold its essence.”