Arepo is a research and curatorial collective. It follows a thematic approach, developing a disciplined synergy across the social sciences and the fine arts. Its aim is the mutual reinforcement of public sociology and art practice.
The exhibition “Hell Remains” is the inaugural event of the first theme cycle of activities of Arepo. In our first theme circle, we dissect the set of religious symbolisms that constitute the prehistory and history of the Christian idea of Hell so as to explore the ways in which its oneiric and bodily imaginary survives in the context of the contemporary world. We examine the historiogenesis of this metaphorization: from the earliest motifs related with the descent into the under-world and the wandering through the  shadowy realms of primordial otherness to its historical uses as an absolute metaphor for the evils that different groups of people can inflict on each other, the sense of physical extremities in general and, in more recent years, the man-made natural disasters (which have come to rearrange the past “maps of Hell”).
If we consider the gradual transition from the supernatural reality of “eternal hell” –a concept associated with limited control of natural processes– to the “hell” of the first industrial age and the World Wars –the by-products of “domination of nature”– and from there to the “hell” of the Anthropocene; or, at the social level, from the “wounded consciousness” and the “hell of self-consciousness” – which followed the gradual increase of the overall control of social processes and, ultimately, the increase of self-control itself– to the “hell of the unconscious” and “Ηell is other people”, we can easily summarize the limitations and unresolved issues of so-called secularization.

— Ioannis Pediotis