Interview with Nikos Salda

Nikos Salda in his Athenian studio – surrounded by stacks of paper and drawn shadow lines that already echo the language of his larger works. IMAGE: AI generated by Daniel Weiss

The framework of Europe – A conversation with Nikos Salda

I meet you on a hot afternoon in Athens. The Acropolis is bathed in shimmering light, and your net casts shadows that move across the white stone – fine lines, as if woven by an invisible hand. Tourists stand below, taking photos. From up here, you can see the sea, and somewhere out there, at the border of Europe, shines your yellow star.

We sit down on a low wall. Two espressos, a recording device, the humming of cicadas.

DW: You used to build scaffolding for clubs. Small stages, short nights. Now you're building for continents. How did that happen?

NS: (laughs) The materials are the same: steel, rope, light. I was never an artist in the classical sense. I built because I wanted to support something – people, music, moments. When my father died, I realized: he was a diplomat, he built bridges that no one saw. I wanted to build bridges that are visible. For me, democracy is also such a structure – something that supports, but always remains unstable.

Installation “Shading the Cradle” – a suspended canopy of black cords above the Parthenon, turning light into shadow and memory into structure. IMAGE: AI generated by Daniel Weiss

Installation “The 13th Star” – a monumental yellow scaffolding structure built on a former NATO base, conceived as an open symbol for an unfinished Europe. IMAGE: AI generated by Daniel Weiss

DW: The net over the Parthenon – it appears both delicate and monumental. Why black?

NS: Because shadow doesn't mean darkness. Most people don't even know that the temple was destroyed in the 17th century – by an explosion, an Ottoman ammunition depot. Since then, it stands open, vulnerable. I didn't want to restore it, I wanted to give it protection. Not a roof, but a thought. The net doesn't touch a single stone. It's an exoskeleton. A reminder that even ruins have dignity.

DW: When you stand underneath it, it suddenly becomes quiet. The air, the light – everything changes.

NS: Yes. I wanted people to feel that democracy is something physical. Something you can enter. Shadows are part of it. They make things visible, that are lost in the light.

We walk a little way, the light shifts, the shadows wander. You stop, pointing west, where the sun hits the ruins.

DW: And the 13th star? The yellow one on the old NATO base?

NS: It's the counterpart. The star stands in the sea, visible far beyond the coast. 90 meters high, made of over one hundred thousand poles – crafted throughout Europe. It shines day and night. The twelve stars of the EU represent perfection. I added a thirteenth, as a break. Because Europe isn't finished. And yes, it stands on a former NATO base – a place of war has become a symbol of peace.

DW: When one hears it like that, it almost sounds like diplomacy by other means.

NS: Perhaps that's it. My father negotiated with language, I negotiate with space. He wanted understanding, I want visibility. We work with the same tools – just on different scales.

DW: And AI? What role does it play in your process?

NS: AI is like a second scaffold. It supports things, but it doesn't build anything itself. I use it to push boundaries – in design, in imagination, in thought. I work with it, not against it. Perhaps that's the true architecture of the future: humans and machines, designing together.

The light softens. The net moves above us. It crackles slightly, as if it were breathing.

DW: What will remain when everything has been dismantled?

NS: The shadow. And the memory that it was there.

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DWHH.art is the personal art project of Daniel Weiss – a collaboration between humans and AI. All stories and images are fictional – created with artificial intelligence, told with human imagination. For all those who believe that beauty is allowed to think.