Acts of Translation is a project that draws on tangible and symbolic systems, methods and frameworks of translation to think through diasporic voices, coastal landscapes and Indigenous forms of belonging as means of dismantling historical discrepancies and resisting canonical narratives of degradation.
How might endangered dialects allow us to trace unexpected convergences between different histories of settler-colonial violence, war and occupation? How might counter-archives serve as transcripts through which to establish resonances across multiple times and spaces, marked by geographical remoteness, political violence or suppression?
Through archival recordings and filmic images, alongside a series of paintings, sketches and texts that draw on the vernaculars of displacement, the works presented propose idiolects that engage with the historical infrastructures at stake. They speak through recursive sequences to articulate what resides in the body, and mobilise myths that give voice to those who have been othered, fetishised and alienated. They suggest vernaculars that decentre the Western gaze and establish accountability as a means of releasing what has been monitored and contained.
Acts of Translation proposes translation as a practice of remaining within the tension of what cannot be fully rendered, lingering at the unstable crossings between history as record and history as ongoing injury.
Ioanna Gerakidi is a writer, curator and educator based in Athens. Her research engages with questions of language and disorder, drawing on feminist, educational and psychoanalytic studies. Poetry and other diaristic and archival forms are often embedded in her practice. She has curated exhibitions and public programmes for institutions, organisations and art spaces including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2023 Eleusis, the Athens Municipal Gallery, the Athens Biennale, State of Concept Athens, the Theocharakis Foundation and Hot Wheels Athens/London. Her writing has been presented at Kunstverein Amsterdam, Stroom Den Haag, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC), Montez Press Radio and Carlos/Ishikawa. Her work has also appeared across international platforms and publications, including Collecteurs, Artnews.lt, Athinorama, Schemas of Uncertainty (online), Xirómero, the catalogue of the Greek Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024), and The Glenkeen Variations by the Crespo Foundation. She has lectured and led workshops and talks at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Piet Zwart Institute, Design Academy Eindhoven, Athens School of Fine Arts, Rupert and SAHA Association, and has served as a mentor at Onassis AiR and ARTWORKS. She is the founder of CHEAT CODE, a platform dedicated to alternative forms of knowledge production and artistic development. She was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS, and in 2026 she was selected as an ARTWORKS Grantee.