A giant red incision stitched across the coastline of Corfu, Greece now serves as land art on Erimitis, marking 14 years since the movement to save this Mediterranean ecosystem began.
The land art on Erimitis took physical form this September when Athens-based artist The Krank installed “Wound,” a temporary 7-by-50-meter fabric artwork stretched across one of northeastern Corfu’s last major undeveloped coastal ecosystems. Created from fabric secured with beach stones, the installation transformed the landscape into a body bearing an oversized red incision, its two sides symbolically held together by black stitches.
The location was deliberately chosen rather than arbitrary. Land art on Erimitis was installed directly atop ground where bulldozers had already passed during construction connected to a previous development plan, positioning the symbolic wound precisely over a real trace of earlier human intervention. What began as ecological damage became the literal canvas for an artwork about vulnerability and repair.
Erimitis occupies the stretch of coastline between Avlaki and Agios Stefanos, where dense Mediterranean woodland, three coastal wetlands, rocky shores, and seven undeveloped coves converge into one of the island’s most complex natural mosaics. Hundreds of plant species, dozens of bird species, and more than 200 marine species have been recorded there, alongside extensive Posidonia seagrass meadows covering the seabed. The wetlands connect to a broader ecological system reaching the Albanian coast and Butrint National Park, making Erimitis significant not just for Corfu but for the entire Ionian region.
That ecological richness collided with development ambitions in 2012, when Greece’s state asset development fund initiated plans to develop the publicly owned site. The approved Kassiopi Project envisioned a five-star hotel, up to 40 villas, and a 57-berth marina, a scale that alarmed residents and environmental organizations given the area’s protected wetlands and sensitive coastal habitats. Construction began in 2021, but sustained legal action and local mobilization through the Save Erimitis initiative ultimately stopped the original plan from proceeding.
Today, the land art on Erimitis exists within genuine uncertainty rather than resolved victory. The land is now controlled by a new investment group connected to Calamos Investments, and while reports suggest a different development approach may be under consideration, no complete or binding master plan has been made public. Wound therefore captures an interim moment, one where the past has already left visible scars while the future remains entirely unwritten.
The stitching itself carried collective meaning beyond artistic metaphor. Members of the local community and Save Erimitis participated directly in creating and positioning the black stitches, transforming an artistic gesture into a genuinely shared act. The Krank has described how weeks spent working under sun and rain, walking Erimitis’s paths and approaching it by sea, alongside daily contact with the locals defending the land, made it impossible to imagine any development here beyond simply preserving what already exists.
Land art on Erimitis became a collective act as members of the local community and Save Erimitis helped position the black stitches, connecting fourteen years of grassroots defense of this Mediterranean ecosystem to a shared artistic gesture of care. Photo courtesy of The Krank.
The land art on Erimitis culminated in a two-day public presentation featuring guided walks led by Save Erimitis alongside scientific advisers, introducing residents and visitors to the area’s ecological characteristics along the route. Even longtime locals encountered their familiar landscape differently through the scientists’ explanations. The walks concluded at the installation itself, where The Krank discussed the work directly with the public, allowing ecological knowledge and artistic experience to inform one another in real time.
The Krank’s broader practice centers on large-scale, site-specific installations exploring landscape, collective memory, and contemporary social issues, with previous work presented at London’s Barbican Centre, Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kassel’s Documenta Halle, and within a World Health Organization program during COP30. True to this ethos of leaving no permanent trace, Wound was fully removed after its two-day public viewing, with all material retained intact for reuse in future artworks.
Land art on Erimitis poses a question that extends well beyond Corfu’s shoreline: whether a landscape already injured by development will be permitted to heal, or whether that same wound will be reopened. The stitches holding “Wound’s” incision together offer no guarantee of recovery. They simply create the conditions under which healing becomes possible, provided the pressure that first tore the land open does not return.
