MARIA NYMFIADI

Site-specific installation

 

Bed Shelter was explicitly designed for the exhibition Greek Island*, which concerns the concepts of protection and detention.

The underground spaces of the Ethniki Insurance Mansion at Korai 4 str were initially built as air raid shelters and then the German headquarters in Athens during the Occupation of Athens. They were used as prisons and transit centres.

 

In 1941, the English Government provided an assembly kit to build an indoor shelter free of charge to households whose combined income was less than £400 per year (£22.000 in 2015). It was designed by Sir John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the minister of Home Security at that time.

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They were approximately 2 m long, 1.2 m wide, and 75 cm high. They had a solid 3 mm steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”-type floor. Overall, 359 parts and three tools were supplied with the pack. It was designed so that the family could sleep inside the shelter at night or during raids and use it as a dining table during the day.

Half a million Morrison shelters were distributed till the end of 1941, and 100.000 more in 1943.

 

The installation Bed shelter imitated the design of the Morrison shelter. It is designed as a single bed and to fit inside one of the detention cells of the first basement.

 

Greek island* exhibition 27/04-16/07/2011

Ethniki Insurance Mansion, Site of Historical Memory 1941-1944, Athens

Curated by the group of artists participating in the show

 

*code name of the secret bunker built to shelter the United States Congress members