Katerina Angelopoulou

“A large wildfire has a very distinctive sound. No one can tell you unless they have been in one. It is a sound that can haunt you…”

On July 23, 2018, one of the deadliest wildfires in modern history swept through Mati and the neighboring areas, claiming the lives of more than one hundred people. Over a hundred lives were lost. Artist Katerina Angelopoulou survived the fire, fleeing with her mother and three-year-old daughter.

The Fumes of Mars is a counter-archive—a forensic and deeply personal investigation into how official narratives of catastrophe are constructed and enforced, and how governance failures and the climate crisis converge in collective trauma. Combining photographs, survivor testimonies, CCTV footage, and artifacts recovered from the ruins, it challenges an account that blamed residents and victims.

Black-and-white landscapes devoid of human presence give way to color images from the day of the fire—a space of heightened reality. Artifacts are photographed as archaeological remains: fragments through which a life begins to be reconstructed. The work raises questions about narrative control and institutional failure—not questions specific to Greece, but the conditions under which communities around the world are increasingly living.