Between Wound and Gift
Artistic Thesis / Self Publication / 2025-2026
Between Wound and Gift is my graduation thesis, written in the form of a diary. It documents my days on the island of Chios where the fragrance of mastiha mingles with local culture, history, and the particular light of the Aegean. During that time I met the community surrounding the material, harvested the resin myself, walked the burnt land (nearly 20% of the island had just been destroyed by fire), visited the museum dedicated to mastiha, spoke with the Mastiha Growers Association, and swam in the waters surrounding the island. I drank mastiha liqueur in almost every mastiha village and let the place work on me slowly.
Returning to Groningen, I spent five months digesting those experiences into words. The result was later shaped into a book, pairing the written text with an old photographic archive of the island alongside my own personal photographs.
Between Wound and Gift invites the reader to sit with their fear of death, to learn the full life of mastiha, and to understand the harsh wound of the kentima not as damage but as a point of radical change.
Evangelia Moschou 