Dimitra Dede has a very sensitive and caring approach to the environment. Her recent series (2019) of photographs entitled “Mayflies” depicts a dark universe shaping a de-symbolized relationship between loss and protection. The artist builds a powerful visual dialogue with these two concepts, with reference to the physical condition of man and the human condition of nature. In her album “Mayflies” the series of photographic works are poetically introduced to the viewers through a milestone of her personal story. Indeed, after the death of her mother, Dimitra Dede travels to the Glacier du Rhône in Switzerland. Due to the climate crisis, the government of the country has covered the glacier with blankets resistant to ultraviolet radiation. This supernatural landscape bears the memory of her mother’s icy and shrouded body. But in the case of nature, the cover is protective, possibly saving the future rather than indicating decay. While the intensity of the tones, the drama of the characters and the feeling of pain are characteristic elements of the work of Dimitra Dede, the nature embodied in her art is meant to protect from the fear and danger of another loss, not only for the artist herself, but also for everyone else.
Dimitra Dede's journey to the mountains consists in a transition from the pain and the void created by the disappearance of a cherished human body to the feeling of peace, consolation and sustainability of nature's body which, if we take care, is there to stay. The stillness of death, the riveting pain of loss, the invocation of memory, is ultimately not defined here as part of a peculiar acedia, but much more as a call for protection and action to everything in danger, thus turning the impending end to a new beginning. Dimitra Dede’s work is a reminder, a reminder of what should be an unconditional love and care for life, whether human, animal, vegetal or even, in this case, mineral, any existence that can be as precious as life itself.