The performance is inspired by airplants in relation to the concept of uprooting. Airplants are rootless plants that absorb nutrients from the air and live off the humidity of the surrounding atmosphere without needing a specific soil to survive. The performance is dedicated to the uprooted individuals who have lost their roots and those who feel like buds withering before they can bloom because the trees that gave them life lacked roots. Combining movement and voice we explore themes such as loss, fragility, and resilience in adverse conditions.

AIRPLANTS
STELLA DIMITRAKOPOULOU

Thursday 29 July | 19:00
Saturday 1 July | 20:00
Isaiah Mansion, 65 Patission Str., Athens 104 33
Duration: 45 min. Entrance free.

Creation: Stella Dimitrakopoulou
Performers: Alexandra Serafimovich, Aimiliani Stavrianidou, Stella Dimitrakopoulou.
Outside eye: Elpida Orfanidou
Presented in the context of Back to Athens 10 International Art Meeting 2023 | Geometry of racional

http://stella-dimitrakopoulou.blogspot.com/

*Stella Dimitrakopoulou is a dance SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2019)

Ιoanna Gerakidi curates Lito Kattou’s solo exhibition titled “LANDS/SexLife” at the independent art space opbo studio, which opens at on Friday, June 30th at 8 pm.

In LANDS/SexLife, Kattou ponders and expands on the characteristics and symbolisms of the mantis as a species encountering life through survival, sex through shielding, resistance through cannibalism. Through a new body of work consisting of reliefs and other sculptural gestures, Kattou traces the circularity of time as an a-chronical structure, the fatality appended on the femme identity as a parable for protecting life and the landscape as a means for altering the dominant geopolitical narratives.

In LANDS/SexLife, the otherworldly, the uncanny, and the infinite are being mapped, inviting the audience to experience it as an act of seduction revealing other desires, sexes, successes, and safe spaces. In the exhibition opening, this parallel and unexplored universe will be activated through an ongoing performance that engages with Kattou’s reliefs, functioning as a mantra for the audience’s entry into the omniversal world.

Lito Kattou (Nicosia, 1990) is a visual artist based in Athens. Her works negotiate understandings of materiality and subjectivity through a composition of practices, spanning from digital fabrication to thermochemical elaborations. Her practice raises questions around the relationship between humans, animals, the environment and technology, symbiosis and alterity. Kattou is the recipient of the Ducato Prize 2019 and the New Positions Award for Art Cologne 2018 and she has been the invited artist at the Fonderia Battaglia, Fondation Thalie Brussels, Art Hub Copenhagen, PCAI Contemporary Art Initiative and 89 plus Google residencies. Recent solo shows have been presented at Fondazione Pomodoro, ICA Milano, TRANEN Copenhagen, Duarte Sequeira Gallery Braga, T293 Rome, Artothek Cologne, Benaki Museum Athens, Point Centre for Contemporary Art Nicosia. Among her activity she has participated in various group shows in museums, galleries and art spaces as at SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, the Onassis Foundation, in the Athens Biennale 7, the National Gallery Sofia, Culturgest Porto, Fidelidade Arte Lisbon, Ludwig Muzeum Budapest, Nottingham Contemporary, Kraupa- Tuskany Zeidler Berlin, Benaki Museum and Deste Foundation, Athens.
www.litokattou.com

Lito Kattou, “LANDS/SexLife”
Curated by Ioanna Gerakidi

Performance contributors:
Clothes: 2WO+1NE=2
Make up / hair styling: Sofia Kossada
Performers: Eleni Alexopoulou, Anna Anoussaki, Leda Dalla, Stavros Kastrinakis, Konstantina Barkouli, Rafael Sidiropoulos, Georgina Choleva
Info:
opbo studio, 86 Filonos Str., Piraeus, 18536
Exhibition opening: Friday, June 30, 2023, 20.00-22.00
Exhibition duration: June 30 – July 27, 2023
Visiting hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12.00-20.00
Free entrance

*Ioanna Gerakidi and Konstantina Barkouli are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

With the ambition to place painting at the center of the debate on contemporary art, highlighting the central issues that preoccupy contemporary painters and introducing the youngest of them to the wider Greek public, the exhibition “Encore: New Greek Painting” which takes place in Gallery of the Municipality of Athens with their editors Eleni Koukou, Christopher Marino and Theophilos Trampoulis organized by the Municipality of Athens/OPANDA, presents painters up to about 40 years of age and will last from June 24th to September 10th.

“Encore: New Greek Painting” features 33 painters based in Greece.While most of these artists are indeed under the age of forty, the term ‘new’ does not refer to the artists’age but rather to their painting language and the inherent qualities of their work.This exhibition adopts an interrogatory nature.Unlike typical exhibitions organised around a specific medium, our intention is not to imply any cultural superiority or aesthetic autonomy of painting. On the contrary, we aim to initiate a discussion by posing a series of questions that form the basis of our investigation.

Participant artists:

Ileana Arnaoutou, Konstantinos Giotis, Niki Gulema, Giorgos Gyzis, Eirini Efstathiou, Anestis Ioannou, Alexia Karavela, Stelios Karamanolis, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, Panagiotis Kefalas, Kiki Kolibari, Giorgos Kontis, Karolina Krasouli, Aristeidis Lappas, Varvara Liakounakou, Aggelos Merges, Nikos Moschos, Eleni Bagaki, Anastasia Pavlou, Dimitris Rentoumis, David Sampethai, Katerina Sarra, Nicolas Simantarakis, Giorgos Stamkopoulos, Sofia Stevi, Antonis Stoantzikis, Anastasis Stratakis, Sasha Streshna, Antrea Tzourovits, Nikos Topalidis, Stella Tsoumatidou, Georgia Fabris, KEZ

ENCORE
New Greek Painting
Gallery of the Municipality of Athens
27 June – 10 September 2023
Curated by
Eleni Koukou, Christophoros Marino and Theophilos Trampoulis

Ileana Arnaoutou, Konstantinos Giotis, Niki Gulema, Eirini Efstathiou, Anestis Ioannou, Alexia Karavela, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, Giorgos Kontis, Karolina Krasouli, Aristeidis Lappas,  Eleni Bagaki, Anastasia Pavlou, Katerina Sarra,  Sofia Stevi,  Sasha Streshna and Antrea Tzourovits are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

In her solo exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries, Sasha Streshna presents a new series of oil paintings which continues her research on western history painting tradition, focusing primarily on depictions of violence, repression and authority.

In her new series, Streshna references found images from soviet textbooks. While obscuring the evidence that would allow the viewer to recognise an event, Streshna converts the illustrations through a painting language that entails suggestive contours and a colour pallet with no apparent contrasts. Hence, the stories of rebellions are explored as incoherent and emotionally charged memories, rather than particular events.

The title of the exhibition “Devon Loch” refers to the name of a famous royal racehorse, which fell – for no apparent reason – on the final straight just as it was about to finish first in the 1956 UK Grand National. The phrase to do a Devon Loch is still used to explain a sudden, last-minute failure of someone who was expected to win.  Although, at first glance, the title suggests failure to comprehend and reshape the world of both painting and the political act, at the same time it also implies that insubordination is one of the most remarkable expressions of self-determination and free will. An incoherent memory, therefore, holds the potential to become a future possibility.

Sasha Streshna
Devon Loch
28 June – 16 September 2023
The opening will take place on Wednesday, 28 June 2023 (19.00 – 22.00)

KALFAYAN GALLERIES | ATHENS
11 Haritos Street
106 75 Kolonaki
Athens

K-Gold Temporary Gallery celebrates its tenth anniversary in Lesvos in the summer of 2023, marking comprehensive artistic and educational programming in collaboration with re-nowned art professionals and institutions. This social experiment has been warmly em-braced by the local community and succeeded in bringing art closer to everyone while demonstrating how contemporary culture can catalyze the development of the Greek is-lands.

The exhibition ΔΕΚA, curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis, is developed as a screening pro-gram featuring representative works by some of the most acclaimed international visual art-ists and choreographers, who have experimented with video and film to capture the body in motion. In particular, the show explores performativity in the moving image by revisiting key themes that traverse previous events of the Gallery. Ideas around transformation, faith, care, gender identity, and travel are elaborated to create new meeting points through hybrid audiovisual narratives.

The selection of ten groundbreaking works from the 1970s to the present day immerses the viewer into a unique atmosphere of theatricality and rituals while celebrating the need to re-define human relationships in the here and now. The camera functions as a revolutionary tool for documenting immaterial and ephemeral artistic practices; it also highlights the body as a means of resistance and claim at the boundaries of art, politics, and activism. These approaches affirm that performance is an integral part of our everyday lives.

Beyond the screening program, the Gallery’s yard hosts a sound installation by American artist and composer Cory Arcangel, who has a strong interest in the technology of music and its impact on contemporary art. Based on house and techno riffs, his suite “24 Dances For The Electric Piano” was previously performed on a world tour that included The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Berliner Philharmonie.

The educational program of the exhibition is developed in collaboration with the experiential art space “Lefko Harti” in Mytilini. It features creative workshops by Mari Moustaizi and Mi-chael Meimaroglou. More information will be announced on social media.

Artists: Marina Abramović, Allora & Calzadilla, Cory Arcangel, Vanessa Beecroft, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Liam Gillick & Gelatin, Maria Lassnig, Anna Maria Maiolino, Li Ran, Pipilotti Rist

*Νicolas Vamvouklis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2021) in curating.

“ΔΕΚΑ”
K-Gold Temporary Gallery
10 years of contemporary art in Lesvos

21-30 July 2023

INFORMATION

21-30/07/2023
11:00-14:00 and 19:00-22:00
Free entrance

Exhibition opening: Friday 21 July, 20:00
The public space outside the Gallery is flooded with dynamic beats and traditional flavours at a party that bridges contemporary music with local gastronomy.

For the opening of the exhibition, there will be a free round-trip bus from Mytilini to K-Gold Temporary Gallery. Departure from the KTEL bus station (Friday 21 July at 19:00). Reservations: +30 6942202222.

Address: Agia Paraskevi, 81102, Lesvos, Greece
Telephone: +30 6942202222
Website: kgoldtemporarygallery.tumblr.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Social Media: @kgoldtemporarygallery

Κ-GOLD TEMPORARY GALLERY

K-Gold Temporary Gallery brings contemporary art and culture closer to everyone through exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist residency programs, educational activities, and publications. It is a founding member of the Mediterranean network MIRAMAR and collabo-rates with the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs.

SUPPORTERS

From July 7 to September 30, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the international group exhibition Mystery 3 Elefsina Mon Amour: In Search of the Third Paradise, curated by Katerina Gregos – Artistic Director of ΕΜΣΤ | Τhe National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, featuring 16 artists from nine countries.

Ιnspired by the book Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics (2008) written by the influential writer, historian, environmentalist, and activist Rebecca Solnit which analyses politics through place, the exhibition posits a socio-political reading of Elefsina and the Thriassian plain and constitutes a study on and testimony to modern and contemporary Elefsina. In addition, the exhibition also takes into account the historical past, which has been instrumental in defining the current identity of the city. It will thus suture memory and experience, space and time, past and present, while simultaneously proposing a psychogeographical analysis of space and place.

Many artists participating in the exhibition probe specific chapters of Elefsina’s history and present – both public and private – and address its traumas and aspirations, and how these are often interconnected. Though many of the artworks will take their cue from the locality of Elefsina, their meaning and significance will relate to wider contemporary social and geo-political issues and processes. As a post-industrial case study, the city is an ideal place for examining some of the major global processes and critical issues of our time: from economic restructuring, and transformations in industrial production and work to environmental questions, migration, citizenship, human rights, and cultural identity. Mystery 3 Elefsina Mon Amour aims – as Solnit does in her book – to reveal “beauty in the harshest landscape and political struggle in the most apparently serene view”, thus conjoining politics, poetics and aesthetics.

Twisting the title of Alain Resnais’ seminal 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour, the exhibition looks beyond the suggested legacy of devastation – brought on in the case of Elefsina not by war but by heavy industry – and into manifestations of resilience, solidarity, hope, and commonality. The questions raised in Resnais’ film are still fundamental and contested; must one forget the past in order to move into the future? Or must we reckon with the past in order to be able to deal with this future? Elefsina, with its layers of history and its future industrial archaeology, seems a perfect place in which to engage these questions. If Hiroshima Mon Amour looked into an emotionally fragile post-war world, Mystery 3 Elefsina Mon Amour shifts its gaze to a post-industrial world in transition and looming uncertainty.

Mystery 3 Elefsina Mon Amour also contains “an exhibition within the exhibition” entitled Aeschylia: A Memory Archive, consisting of archival material from the visual arts segment of the “Aeschylia” festival, which was pivotal for the development of the profile of the city as a site for cultural production and presentation. The objective of this tribute is to shed light on the importance of this cultural initiative as it laid an important precedent prior to the selection of the city as European Capital of Culture.

Contributors:
Participating artists: Katerina Apostolidou / Marianna Christofides / Anastasia Douka / Mahdi Fleifel / Marina Gioti / Igor Grubic / Aglaia Konrad / Natalia Manta / Adrian Paci / Serban Savu / Sphinxes (Manos Flessas & Ioanna Tsakalou) / Maria Tsagkari / Dimitris Tsoumplekas / Maarten Vanden Eynde / Vangelis Vlahos

Artistic director / curator: Katerina Gregos
Assistant curator: Dora Vasilakou
Architectural design: Thalia Melissa
Research consultant (Elefsina): Yorgos Skianis
Production: Yorgos Efstathoulidis – Constructivist Exhibitions & Andie Chatzi
Project Coordination: Zoe Moutsokou – Directorate of Contemporary Art 2023 Eleusis, Anastasia Tsopelaki – architect

2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture
With the support of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMΣT)

Three iconic, short “ballet” works – L’après midi d’un faune (Paris, 1912), Grand pas classique (Paris, 1949), and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (New York, 1960) – are scrutinized, analyzed, and reconstructed as a choreographic collage, into a new staged proposition.

What constitutes a “dancing couple” at the present time? Repair is a quartet that puts emphasis on the notion of pas de deux and its different manifestations in the history of ballet. The ambiguous title, Repair, primarily denotes an intention of “restoring” the heterosexual duets and the choreographic strategies that identify them. It also implies, as a wordplay (“re-pair”), the “re-pairing” within the group. With meticulous technical precision and detail, the famous music compositions and choreographies are presented in a new “orchestration”. As such, a new relationship between them is forged, as composite aspects of the present piece.

Choreography: Dimitris Mytilinaios
Music: Lambros Pigounis
Lighting design: Dimitris Kasimatis
Costume design: Angelos Mentis
Make-up – Hairstyling: Ioanna Lygizou
Assistant to the choreographer: Elena Novakovits
Performers: Amalia Kosma, Pierre Magendie, Konstantina Barkouli-Gavri, Dimitris Mytilinaios
Production: howtomakeyourlifeharder
Executive production: Olga Tsatsouli

Funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports Supported by the NEON Organization for Culture and Development

*Dimitris Mytilinaios and Konstantina Barkouli-Gavri are SNF ARTWORKS Dance Fellows.

“Leave What You Loved Once” is an interactive installation that invites the public to contribute
personal objects they no longer cherish. Composed of transparent cell box units, it creates a floating
display against the backdrop of Elefsina, allowing the objects and the landscape to become the
artwork themselves. Asking people to let go of things, is a symbolic action with multilayered meanings.
It captures objects in the moment of transitioning from their functional, individually- owned, indoor
existence to the public domain, sparing them from becoming trash.

The growing collection of personal objects becomes a monument hosting the leftovers of society and a
symbol of coexistence across divergent entities. Locals and visitors are encouraged to participate in a
collective action, creating a mélange of kilometer-zero objects and ones coming from afar.
“Leave What You Loved Once” aspires to touch upon critical issues such as property, production,
consumerism, democracy, changing Mediterranean landscapes, historical and contemporary remains
and current environmental and anthropological crisis. A call for collaboration and inclusivity, prompting participants and viewers to contemplate and reexamine the relationship with the material and the spiritual world, inviting us to recognize the potential for new histories and narratives through the objects we leave behind.

MYSTERY 144 Leave What You Loved Once
PARTICIPATORY PROJECT
ARTIST: Elena Demetria Chantzis (GR)
PRODUCTION: Wild Reeds (Panos Giannikopoulos) (GR)

*Elena Demetria Chantzis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2020) in visual arts.

Sculpture as a form of art and a myth-oral tradition both act as a common basis and creative starting point for the personal, special, sensitive and at the same time dynamic artistic gestures by 14 contemporary women artists in the exhibition entitled “Contemporary Womanhood 1.0: present femininities” at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona in Athens, from 06 July to 08 October 2023.

The exhibition, which is hosted intentionally at the department of contemporary sculpture of MOMus, a museum founded by the woman sculptor Alex Mylona, an intangible connection of the transition from modern to contemporary is attempted, not only in sculpture but also in creation and life itself.

The main pillar of the exhibition’s research is the work of the psychoanalyst and activist Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and more specifically her book entitled “Women Who Run with the Wolves”. Through intuitive, explorative and cathartic myths related to the untamed nature of women, the author brings tales from the past to the modern era. This exhibition focuses on the best-known story from Inuit’s oral tradition – the Skeleton Woman. According to the legend, a woman who experiences absolute despair and lives as a monstrous creature underwater, manages to keep the essence of her being intact and eventually reborn, through the power of transformation.

The triptych of life – death – death described in the myth making death a transitory path of transmutation, transformation and mutation, acts as a common thread for the axes that run throughout the exhibition: sculpture, the artistic gesture, the position of the female artist, and the mutation of it all from established ideas and entrenched, inaccessible and rigid standards to something more fluid, new and ultimately alive again.

Artists: Mirsini Artakianou, Despina Charitonidi, Nicole Economides, Nikomachi Karakostanoglou, Mariandrie, Natalia Manta, Esmeralda Momferratou, Natalia Papadopoulou, Harikleia Papapostolou, Nana Sachini, Johnna Sachpazis, Sophia Saranti, Marina Velisioti, Dimitra Zervou

Curated by: Faidra Vasileiadou, museologist – art curator

Exhibition «Contemporary Womanhood 1.0: present femininities»
MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona (5, Agion Asomaton, Thissio, Athens)
06 July – 08 October, 2023
Opening: Thursday 06 July, 2023, 20:00

*Mirsini Artakianou, Nicole Economides, Natalia Manta, Natalia Papadopoulou, Johnna Sachpazis, and Marina Velisioti are SNF ARTWOKRS Fellows.

Solo show Lise by Adam Christensen
Curated by Panos Fourtoulakis

Haus N Αthen Off-Site
12 July—8 September
Opening: Wednesday 12 July, 19:30-21:30
Wednesday – Friday 16:00-19:00 and by appointment.

With the support of Haus N and the Danish Art Foundation.

*Panos Fourtoulakis is a curatorial SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2021).

With undiminished interest in the conceptual content of body states, the choreographer Anastasia Valsamaki (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020) presents her new work focusing on the different ways to conceive wrestling.

‘From combat sports to the competitiveness between two or more opposing forces’.

Although there are several ways of perceiving ‘wrestling’ in terms of movement, the interest is located in the way the performed actions are classified. If with wrestling we usually refer to the escalating conflict and consequently the discharging of an action, the choreographer Anastasia Valsamaki urges us to see the transition from intensity to repression and its reversal in a ‘struggle’ that does not divide winners from losers. The reference to wrestling, therefore, is a way of investigating the movement beyond the corporeality of the wrestlers and the theatricality of the event; by possibly combining the ‘studiousness’ of the choreographic score with its fun and exaggeration.

In this peculiar struggle, five dancers – as a group but also as a quirky ensemble – try to bring together a priori contrasting elements: the initiating explosiveness with the awkwardness of a pause, the refueling of the physical frenzy with the suspension of relaxation, the completion of a pattern that constantly re-articulates by changing its composition. Ultimately, if the goal is to remain ‘in the game’ by constantly inventing new rules, then the fight comes as a promise to renew what keeps us still in the game, even if, momentarily, every evident goal seems to have failed.

Concept & Choreography: Anastasia Valsamaki
Music & Sound Composition: Jeph Vanger
Dramaturgy: Anastasio Koukoutas
Dancers: Gavriela Antonopoulou, Tasos Nikas (replacement for Nikos Grigoriadis), Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Thanos Ragousis, Xenia Stathouli (replacement for Nefeli Asteriou)
Light design: Apostolos Strantzalis
Styling: Nefeli Asteriou, Anastasia Valsamaki
Production Manager: Eleni Valsamaki
Text: Anastasio Koukoutas in collaboration with MINDTHELOOP
Producer: MINDTHELOOP
Created during Anastasia’s Valsamaki Artist Fellowship Program 2020 supported by ARTWORKS and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Anastasia Valsamaki – W REST L ING
29.07 | 21:30 | Mikis Theodorakis theatre
Tickets: 12€ (regular), 9€ (student, unemployed)

* Anastasia Vaslamaki is a Dance SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020.

Fear is an experience that reminds us that we are animals after all.

Adrenaline flows through our bodies, our hearts pound and sweat pours from our foreheads when we feel a threat to our well-being. The neural science and biochemistry behind it all is complex, but the net result is very simple: fear helps us survive.

Zygmunt Bauman in his book ‘Liquid Fear’ analyzes the widespread penetration of fear into modern Western life and its consequences. Ulrich Beck’s theories on the risk and insecurities generated by accelerating social and technological change are along the same lines. In such an era, characterized by uncertainty and lack of trust in social structures and relationships, the individual is now faced with complex issues that he is unable to understand, let alone manage.

No longer able to slow down the pace of change, or even predict its direction, individuals focus their attention on things they feel they can control.
Avoiding sun exposure, avoiding contact with bacteria, eating fatty foods, using biometrics, ‘protecting’ themselves by using cameras, fortifying themselves in gated communities are illustrative examples. In other words, fear has shifted from the realm of existential safety to the realm of self-protection.

The exhibition ‘Beyond Fear’ explores the context and the ways in which this displacement takes place, which eighteen eighteen artists living and producing work in Athens and Tinos will attempt to capture.

Tinos, is a place that seemingly protects its inhabitants from the dangers of urban life. Life here falls short of the anxiety that runs through an urban landscape and the ‘other’ person is not necessarily a threat. Or is it not? Does fear exist here too, while the human body, social bonds, security and technology are simply perceived differently?
The aim of the exhibition is to be an encounter between geographically differentiated experiences of the same experience and to form the basis for a dialogue between the art scene of Athens and Tinos.

Participants:

Anna Gonzalez Noguchi
Baratto Mouravas
Byron Kalomamas
Christina Mot
Dimitris Tampakis
Evangelia Niarhou
Hypercomf
James Fuller
Jeremy Lacombe
Konstantinos Doumpenidis
Konstantinos Lianos
Leuteris Naftis
Mariana Kolliri
Niki Danai Chania
Orionas Marangozian
Rihardos Foskolos
Serapis
Vangelis Hatzis
Yannis Sklavounos
Yannis Voulgaris

Open discussion during the opening at 19.00 at the atrium:
‘(Late) Modernity as an Age of Anxiety’
By @ysklavounos , Political Scientist

Curated by Un Processed Realities
Graphic Design by ESTO Association
Visuals by Markela Bgiala

With the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture

*Byron Kalomamas, Evangelia Niarchou, Paola Palavidi & Ioannis Koliopoulos (members of Hypercomf), Konstantinos Doumpenidis, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos & Krini Dimopoulou & Dimitra Dimopoulou (members of Serapis Maritime) are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

Ammophila Vol. 4 Hopes and Promises, attempts to initiate a dialogue regarding hope, anticipation and the need for future imaginations are created within us as well as about the mechanics of making promises. It also refers to the relationship between hopes and promises as two containers of projections and comparisons of our needs which constantly feed each other. Among the cosmological myths mentioned about Elafonisos we find one that speaks about the refuge of Paris and the Helen (of Troy) in the sanctuary of Athena that existed on the island, as an intermediate station until their departure for Troy. After the destruction of Troy, Odysseus tried to enter the strait of Elafonisos but the wind (sent by Zeus) forbade it. The hopes of Odysseus to set sail and the promises of the couple in love are linked by a common place-point of reference for the two Homeric epics. A paradise on earth that today needs our collective care to stay intact. The idyllic landscape of Elafonisos in the summer season can be the perfect place to create expectations and adopt big goals in the midst of the optimism of the summer holidays and our proximity to nature. In addition, the exhibition takes place for the fourth year at the island’s only school, a place that is a shaping factor for the children’s future. Our collective visions and plans for a future with more love for the earth, for each other, and for what awaits us after the next sunrise can constitute our most personal coping mechanisms. The referentiallity of care can act as a paradigm to construct a future without crisis. The hopes and promises we receive and offer are linked to ideologies, scientific discoveries, emotions, collective and individual goals. They tend to be flexible and determine their variable elements according to the historical era, the environment and our capabilities.

What does it mean to hope and to envision? What does it mean to promise or to build your hopes on an edifice of promises?
How empowering can the regional character of artistic production be in a country like Greece, in a region of the country, far away from the promises of an urban cosmopolitan life?
With what promises do we fall in love, hoping that our own love will become a monument of the future?
How do we love the earth on which we hope and what do we promise to it in order to survive for those we love?

Ammophila Vol. 4 Hopes and Promises focuses on an organized effort to highlight sculptural forms that contain the element of changeability, the juxtaposition of natural and technical materials and a feeling of departure from classical structures without denying the possibilities of communicating with them. The “monuments” we envision are as fragile, ephemeral and imaginative as our hopes and promises.

Participating visual artists: Nikos Arvanitis, Margarita Bofiliou, Petros Efstathiadis, Dimitris Halatsis, George Kazazis, Danai Kotsaki, Emmyleah Liaros, Foteini Palpana, Malvina Panagiotidi, Rallou Panagiotou, Stefania Strouza

Participating writers: Panagiotis Barbagiannis, Sophie Charlotte Bombeck, Charis Kanellopoulou, Emmanouela Kyriakopoulou, Michalis Lykouris, Giannis Maniatis, Dana Papachristou, Lefteris Spyrou, Theophilos Tramboulis, Eva Vaslamatzi

Also, from July 23, the workshop entitled Waste-d Hopes: A ‘Place’ of Reconstruction will be held by Panagiotis Barbagiannis.

Waste-d Hopes: A ‘Place’ of Reconstruction
Workshop – Workshop for Children and Youth

Sand. Water. Sand dunes. Shells. Air. Trash. And people.
Little people who are artists by nature will utilize natural materials and co-shape a place for works of art. A place where these works will not just be within it, but the place itself will be the means of their creation.

With main focus on Land Art themed ‘Permanence and Deterioration around us’ but also the reuse and utilization of the waste that will result from the exhibition, the participants will be involved in experiential activities of building-deconstructing-rebuilding an ever-changing scenic installation entitled “Wasted Hopes”.
How does the place around me change when my surroundings change this place?

Ammophila Vol. 4 Hopes and Promises
Location: Elafonisos School, Elafonisos, Laconia
Opening: July 22, 19.30
Visiting hours: 22-31 July, 18.30-21.00
Workshop duration: 23 & 24 July, 19.30-21.00
Curated by ammophila

Organisation: Ammophila Non-Profit in collaboration with the Municipality of Elafonisos and the Region of Peloponnese

** Margarita Bofiliou, Petros Efstathiadis, Foteini Palpana, Malvina Panagiotidi, Stefania Strouza and Eva Vaslamatzi are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

On Friday, September 1, from 7:30pm, Spyros Rennt (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021) presents ‘Corporeal’, the newest book

Spyros will be at Hyper Hypo to sign ‘Corporeal”s copies and chat about the book and his work with Vassilia Kaga (Curatorial SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020).

Spyros Rennt
Παρουσίαση βιβλίου Corporeal῾
Hyper Hypo (Βορέου 10, Αθήνα)
Παρασκευή 1 Σεπτεμβρίου 2023, 19:30

From September 8 to October 1, 2023 and as part of 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture, Athanasios Kanakis (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022) presents an installation titled State of Emergency (2023) at old machine works (3, Filomila str. – Karaiskaki and Kanellopoulou str., Elefsina). The work is inspired by the disastrous and historically unprecedented flooding which hit the western suburbs of Attica in 2017, drawing from the personal experience of the artist and his family in Mandra, Attica —Kanakis’ birthplace and one of the main areas affected by the disaster.

The work showcased here constitutes a fragile monumental topography, subject to constant, threatening oscillations. The resulting glass landscape is sensitive to external forces, ever changing, constantly vibrating, deteriorating, cracking, with parts of it being destroyed every day. What will be left after the destruction-exhibition? What fills the space between what we strive to salvage and what finally manages to survive? In the state of emergency, everything reverts to a single organic matter: the living, the human material, all crystallize into a volume orchestrating a deceleration of its cycle of existence.

State of Emergency stages the climax of an ongoing drama: the outbreak of a natural disaster and the exact moment of declaring the state of emergency —right when all other natural elements are seen as posing a threat to human life. The tragic realisation of a preordained mass retreat: the painful dichotomisation of a holistic ecosystem giving rise to an unbearably simplified juxtaposition opposing man to nature. The memory of the trauma of a violent separation, the sense of truly missing the time when we used to be “one”.

Christina Petkopoulou

Information:

Duration: September 8 – October 1, 2023
Soft Opening: September 8, 19:00
Official opening: September 13, 19:00
Location: Old Machine Works (3, Filomila str.-Karaiskaki-Kanellopoulou str., Elefsina)
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Friday, 17.00 – 21.00
Saturday & Sunday, 11:00 – 14:00 & 17.00– 21.00

Free Admission

Exhibition Credits:

Text: Christina Petkopoulou
Translation: Natassa Sideri
Production: WILD REEDS
Project Coordination: Zoi Moutsokou – Directorate of Contemporary Art 2023 Eleusis

2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

Hyper Hypo and The Breeder are pleased to invite you to a very special evening into the vampiric erotic fantasy of Amalia Vekri, with the launch of her new publication, Midnight Daughter Memoirs, on Thursday 07 September 2023, 19:00 – 22:00.

On the heels of her recent exhibition at The Breeder, Amalia bites into the under-explored lore of female vampires via her own texts, found images, and her most recent works, in this newest zine published by Hyper Hypo.

Come by for your chance at immortality, for the launch of the zine, with readings and conversation with the artist.

AMALIA VEKRI
MIDNIGHT DAUGHTER MEMOIRS

Zine launch, artist talk and reading at HYPER HYPO
Thursday 7 September 2023, 19:00 – 22:00

HYPER HYPO
Voreou 10
Athina, 105 51
21 1735 9628

Artist Talk: John Sahpazis
Thursday, September 21 2023 20:00
MOMus – Museum Alex Mylona
5, Agion Asomaton Square, Thisio, Athens

The talk is part of the parallel activities programme “Contemporary Womanhood 1.0: present femininities”

More info here.

*John Sahpazis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2022)

On Friday, September 15, at 7pm, opbo studio presents the first solo show of AnnaMaria Pinaka in Greece, under the title “stay with me, I’ll give you jewls,” curated by Ioanna Gerakidi (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021). Through a new series of paintings, sculptures, and performative gestures, the exhibition inverstigates the vexed subjects of childhood and mothering, of gender, femininity, and trauma: How can the girly, the femme or the seductive co-exist with the untamed, the be-wildered, the tomboyish? How can identities, always, unapologetically swift?

“stay with me, I’ll give you jewls” will run until October 14. In the context of the exhibition, a series of parallel events will take place, the program of which will be announced soon.

Curatorial text by Ioanna Gerakidi

stay with me, I’ll give you jewls, the solo show of AnnaMaria Pinaka traces the complexities and pleasures, the guilts and desires, arising from within, yet occasionally imposed or reflected by societal norms and political realms. Through a new series of large-scale paintings composed spatially along with other gestures, varying from sculptural pieces to performative acts, both visible and invisible, Pinaka aims to speak about the vexed subjects of childhood and mothering, gender and femininity, trauma and the forever efforts of reclaiming its axes and along, agency.

Whilst utilizing paltry garments and frivolous materials, such as bedsheets found in her childhood bedroom, pieces of cheap tulle used for bridal or ballerina dresses, as well as curved, sculpted and painted styrofoam, among others, her work aims to operate as a comment on what willfully remains trivial and light, sticking to its innocence, or unwillingness to pretend a pompousness that was never there. The works produced for the show come with symbolisms affiliated both with idealized or demonized figures and creatures. From mermaids or princesses, to ballerinas representing western beauty standards, mystified or praised for these exact qualities in the 80’s and 90’s, to pigs and other animals or species unknown, carrying the semantic burden of dirt and filthiness, Pinaka’s show longs for staying with and taking care of contradictory schemes; How can the girly, the femme or the seductive co-exist with the untamed, and the tomboyish? How can identities, always, unapologetically swift? How can they concurrently be naïve and politically engaged, finding their empowerment within the passivity of undoing, whilst at the same time taking a stance towards an action a priori denying acceleration?

This play in between seemingly oppositional forces, resonates also with the performative processes followed for the production of the paintings, the drawings, the videos and the sculptural materials presented in the show. The questions raised over these actions, again, aim on bringing together what would otherwise be perceived as oxymoronic. How can a performative gesture claim its dynamic, mutant characteristics, whilst being uneventful? How can it advocate its power without collapsing into nihilism, without vaporizing or melting away? How inertia can be preserved, creating an uncannily static archive of pasts, presents and futures?

Whilst holding on to this gap, on this unknown, uncertain, suspended state of what’s excluded, suppressed, or forgotten, Pinaka’s performativity ponders on what can legitimize ambiguity; the pleasure and desire it can unleash when uncertainty is chosen and not forced upon. The work of Pinaka, traces queerness “as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality, as a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present”* to quote the words of Jose Esteban Munoz. The dreamy travesties, the promising subversions, the unapologetic guilt deities become in Pinaka’s work the vessel to grow in this other horizon, to look with and touch lust as an act of resistance.

“I paint as if I was 7, cause that’s when they told me my painting sucks.”
Anna Maria Pinaka

*Muñoz, José Esteban. “Introduction: Feeling Utopia.” Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009, pp. 1–18.

AnnaMaria Pinaka (b. 1983, Greece) lives and works between the Netherlands and Greece. Using video, drawing and performance, she looks at how (mundane) experiences of sexuality translate through the lens of auto-ethnography and masquerading while utilizing the low-tech, the unpolished and the excessively child-like. In her practice-based PhD, “Porno-graphing: ‘dirty’ sexual subjectivities and self-objectification in lens-based art (2017, Roehampton University),” she examined the methodological use of ‘dirty’ and non-sovereign sexual and artistic subjectivities in the production of images. Pinaka has exhibited, screened and performed her work at places such as the 6th Athens Biennale, Kunstraumllc, The Project Gallery, WETFILM and Mimosa House, amongst others, and she is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.

Info: opbo studio, 86 Philonos Str., Piraeus, 18536
Opening: Friday, September 15, 19:00
Duration: September 15 – October 14
Opening hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 20:00
Free entrance

Stemming from the on-going artistic research project IN-QUARRY, initiated in 2021, addressing
practicing public space and expanded choreographic methodologies, arisandmartha’s new work titled ‘they returned regularly, each time for more’ proposes a sound installation which activates and transmits the groups ideas, thinking and scoring processes while working on the archive of a former stone quarry in suburban Athens.

The work proposes a reversed activation of what it means to practice public space through the
receptors of human or other-than-human entities, not on the site of the quarry itself, but on a remote
and neutral space. One of the fundamental ideas of this work is the quarry seen as a vessel (damarmeans vessel/vein in Turkish) as well as a generator of ideas, thoughts and activations. The flow of excavated and extracted inorganic material (building stone and lime stone) found its place into the Athenian urban fabric. In reverse, the flow of organic material (human and other-than-human entities) has returned into the quarry post its exploitation and excavation era. How do we inhabit and practice those spaces? How do we imagine and invent new narratives for the former quarry of Galatsi –
Phychiko? Recordings, spoken text and performative actions are being shared between audience and
collaborators in a scaled and spatial simulation of a collectively re-imagined space.

arisandmartha is the creative collaboration between dancers, performers and dance makers Aris
Papadopoulos and Martha Pasakopoulou. Based in Athens, Greece they work at the crossroads of
staged and site-specific dance performances, exploring and expanding the choreographic possibilities
by implementing dance and performing language, text and conceptual ideas. The duo investigates the
notions of togetherness and performing friendship on stage, by using re-enactment and ready-made
materials, contemporary ritualistic practices and strategies of activating and performing archives.
arisandmartha have been supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (2018-23), KLAP
Maison pour la danse – Marseille (2018), FLUXUM Foundation – Geneva (2019), Flux Laboratory
Athens (2019), GARAGE Performing Arts – Corfu (2018), Duncan Dance Research Center – Athens
(2018-22), and Onassis AiR, Athens (2022-23).

Aris Papadopoulos and Martha Pasakopoulou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows (2022 and 2019 respectively).

CREDITS
Artistic Research / Concept: arisandmartha | Aris Papadopoulos & Martha Pasakopoulou
Material development / Co-creation: Christina Karagianni, Anastasios Koukoutas, Jeph Vanger, Martha Pasakopoulou, Aris Papadopoulos
Artistic Collaborator: Anastasios Koukoutas
Studio recordings and sound mixing: Jeph Vanger
Production: arisandmartha
The production ‘they returned regularly, each time for more’ is realized with the financial support of
the Ministry of Culture.
Kindly supported by the Duncan Dance Research Center – Athens.
The research for ‘they returned regularly, each time for more’ was supported by Onassis AiR.

arisandmartha
‘they returned regularly, each time for more’
Sound Installation / Performance
Duration 15-24 September 2023
Open every day between 19:00-22:00
Haus N Athen
Kairi 6, 2nd floor, Monastiraki, Athens