‘Phobētron’ follows a series of deformed and uncanny dolls and puppets that stand as personifications of different phobias and anxieties of Gazi’s childhood, in which the transparency of the nylon fabric, the softness of the cushioning and the perpetual method of stitching, provide a tender handling and a familiarization with the contextual character of the puppet. Each entity is fabricated with a variety of selected objects, from the ancestral archive and the personal collection of the artist, which are used as phylacteries against the phobia the doll reflects.

Gazi, features that the process of creating these figures and therefore interacting with them, resembles the tendency of a child to identify with the character of the puppet and project its feelings on it, helping it to relieve from distress and traumatic experiences. The healing and transitional nature of this ritual enables the beholder to rehabilitate repressed emotions and phobic states.

‘Phobētron’ embodies the zone of fear that immobilize the body, the zone fear that is not acquired but hereditary, keeping the person attached in systems and habits that used to serve childhood necessities. The stiffness of the ‘50s wooden baby highchair levitates in between a trinity: throne, shelter and prison, enthroning, protecting and yet entrapping the organic figure.
‘Phobētron s’ is dressed in Gazi’s baptism gown, portraying elements of affection and cure, whereas from the lucency of the distorted body are emerging flowers, bones, coins and laces, serving traditional fragments that bejewel the rite of the transitional passage.
A selection of objects surrounds the puppet that carry symbolic values and display different narrations that coexist and contradict each other, incarnating attachments, terrors and asylums.