At the very beginning of July, a fanatic greek priest reached the public sculpture Crisis to disfigure it with an hammer.
The artwork is an original sculpture of Tasos Nyfadopoulos, a young greek artist who donated his work to the city of Athens in 2015.
The attack to the statue was recorded in a video made by the attacker himself, which was lately uploaded on Youtube. In the footage, the priest condemns the artwork for being evil, before starting hammering it: he also urges his followers in joining his cause. The priest was not new to these videos: on his channel there are other videos of him vandalising ATM points, wind up people against the system as he says it is evil.
The sculpture Crisis, a monument considered of national heritage, had been conceived to make people reflect about the financial crisis, which had deeply affected the greek population in the last years. It was Tasos’ s gift to the city of Athens and the first sculture to deal with such a topic.
Tasos Nyfadopoulos was very shocked by the attack and denounced it with the authorities. He also released a video on Youtube to better explain the attack and what the next steps will be. The video quickly went viral in Greece and elsewhere too, witnessing a rise in views. The artist will soon start a crowdfunding page to raise money and pay for repairs to the sculpture damages and for the legal expenses he is facing.
Such a gesture has rightly been condemned by the public opinion. Once again, this was an episode where art and artists were victims of close-minded ideologies.
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