Ben Fuog, an Australian artist who is passionate about Greece, has drawn inspiration from the Mediterranean country’s beautiful capital, to create two series of works that reflect his thoughts on the way Athens is dealing with the economic crisis of the last few years.

The first series, titled Molon Lave, came out in the summer of 2011, a turbulent time for Greece. Its title, meaning “come and take them”, is a classical expression of defiance and it was the phrase with which King Leonidas responded when the Persian armies demanded that the Greeks surrender their weapons at the Battle of Thermopylae.

On his official website, the artist writes for this series: “In the summer of 2011, at the height of the collective consciousness’s realization of the severity of the economic crisis in Greece, strikes and protests were commonplace. On return to Athens from the relative sanctity offered by the Aegean, a metaphor for the situation had come to life. Athina Kathari had been on strike for weeks and the city had been deluged with the physical manifestation of waste created by modern democracy, capitalism and consumerism. Despite the onslaught of these ideologies, the beauty of Athens and its people shone as brightly and defiantly as ever.”

His second series of works “Athena Ascending” came 3 years after Molon Lave and depicts the Greek capital’s gradual ascension from the crisis, at a time when the Greek people were starting to see glimmers of hope for the future.