I never look at you from the place from which you see me is an installation by Olaf Nicolai presented opposite the Panathenaic Stadium in central Athens.

The two photographs displayed on billboards were taken in June 2022 in Ancient Olympia, Greece, using a parabolic mirror—the very mirror used every two years to ignite the Olympic torch with the sun’s rays. The parabolic mirror conjures media images of the ceremonial lighting of the flame and the ensuing torch relay, rituals inaugurated for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. These symbolic gestures are embodied in the parabolic mirror, still in use today.

The photographs taken by artist Olaf Nicolai depict the landscape and historical site of Ancient Olympia as anamorphic, ethereal, floating distortions. Anamorphic images fracture classical notions of perspective, creating visual disruptions which destabilize the concept of stable subjectivity, suggesting a more circuitous process of seeing. Within each distortion, the subject’s perspective is always somehow present, prompting the question: Who exactly is looking at what? Or as psychoanalyst Lacan wrote in his chapter Anamorphosis, in turn quoting the French poet Valery, “I see myself seeing myself.” The displayed works reveal images that emerge when a parabolic mirror is confronted with another type of mirror—a camera—instead of a torch. As Nicolai says, “My photos make a paradox visible.” These images are produced by a mirror designed to reflect as little as possible. Parabolic mirrors are not designed to reflect light. In terms of images, they rather let them “collapse.” Therefore, these photographs were produced by a mirror designed to reflect back as little of the world that they face as possible. In the run-up to the 33rd Olympic Games in Paris, these works on site, in front of the stadium, probe into the complex history of the contemporary games in relation to their ancient referent, the role they play in building Modern Greece’s national identity, as well as the political and social role that the games mirror. The games are an echo of their times, as are we.

This project is made possible with the support of the City of Munich, Stiftung Federkiel, and Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin. The installation site in Kallimarmaro was kindly granted by the Hellenic Olympic Committee.