Category: Fellows news

Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, as part of the annexM’s summer art programme, presents the monographic essay exhibition of Maria Papanikolaou entitled Free from what, curated by Anna Kafetsi.

The artist presents 5 new in situ space works specifically for the exhibition in the Service Courtyard, namely: 3 sculptural installations and 2 multi-channel video installations presented on projection and TV monitors.

Maria Papanikolaou, one of the most important artists of the younger generation based in Athens, studied law at the University of Athens, sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands and then at the Postgraduate School of Visual Arts of the ASFA, where she received her PhD in 2022. In her artistic work she combines sculpture, photography, video and performance in an attempt to explore a theme that has been with her since her early studies at the Law School: the restriction of freedom, imprisonment, incarceration, but also the possibility of escape and transgression of limits.

The exhibition – Maria Papanikolaou’s first solo show in Greece – includes new works especially for the industrial space of the Service Yard. Minimalist in situ interventions, sculptural installations and video installations will be presented in an imperceptibly dialogical relationship with each other, creating a low-voiced poetic universe. The ambiguous title phrase [free/of what], suspended between question and statement, sets the tone for the internal, deeply reflective nature of the exhibition.

The artist herself says of her works: “I make models and sculptures that depict spaces of potential escape, but also resilient tools that bear witness to imaginative ways of disentanglement and escape. Throughout human history, thousands of people have tried to escape from slavery, war, poverty, authoritarian regimes, concentration camps and prisons of all kinds. Combining data with imagination, my work traces through a variety of forms whether the stories of these people can be turned into a kind of textbook for the recovery of human freedom. In Art History we often see the incarcerated person presented as a passive victim who evokes our pity and sympathy. My artistic production is instead based on a series of experiments aimed at presenting man as that creative subject who invents ways of escape, satisfying his basic instinct for life and freedom. The works I am exhibiting are therefore proposals to break the bonds that may pin each or every one of us down in different states of unfreedom.”

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12:00 – 20:00
Thursday 12:00 – 22:00 (free entrance)
Monday closed

During the exhibition “Free from what”, Maria Papanikolaou will present the lecture-performance Motivation in the Project Room of the Service Yard. Dates: 12.10, 14.10 & 29.10 (16.00- 20:00)

* Maria Papanikolaou is a Visual Arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2018).

Caterina Stamou is 2023 Book Art Research Fellow at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Caterina will conduct on-site reserach at the Center for Book Arts which will later be presented in a public talk. Subsequently, the research will be published in Book Art Review, a magazine that promotes and strengthens book art criticism.

Center for Book Arts (CBA) is the oldest non profit dedicated to uplifting and furthering the book arts & book art through education, preservation, exhibition, art making, and community building. Through the Book Art Research Fellowship, researchers and scholars have the possibility to conduct research draws upon CBA’s unique collections of materials related to book art.

During the fellowship (16 – 28 October 2023), Caterina will develop part of her research on the poetics and politics of repair as manifested in the practices of contemporary artists and art publishing collectives. She will focus on the organization’s collection which includes fine art, exhibition catalogues and a reference collection, and she will visit community-based archives and art spaces.

Caterina Stamou is a curatorial SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2022).

Texts, as a daily practice, creation and discovery, construct the memory of the city in the present. They are constantly knitted and unknitted as if the threads of a warp (stimoni in Greek), over and under which other threads are passed to make cloth. STIMONI exhibition is an articulation of nine artistic multimedia projects and performances by eleven artists. The works, chosen for the different practices they incorporate, write with their different gazes and media the text of their own experiences of Athens. Woven with the personal warp of each artist, they compose narratives, and form new writings. They weld their matter in space, surrendering to the act of looking, inviting one to wander and discover diverse spatio-temporal experiences. Like shells, or scraps of personal or collective memories, they preserve part of the city’s whole. In STIMONI, the text unfolds in all its parts; as construction, as weaving, as an acoustic composition, and finally, or primarily, as fallen matter lying on the ground.

Artists: Myrto Xanthopoulou, Antonis Theodoridis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Collectif MASI, Yannis Stournas, Yorgos Karailias, Filippos Vasiliou, Alexandros Mistriotis, Giorgos Varoutas, Anna Linardou

Concept & curation: Stefania Orfanidou

Graphic design: Blind Studio
Exhibition duration: Thursday 23 November – Sunday 10 December 2023
Opening: Thursday 23 November 2023, at 19:00
MISC Athens Tousa Botsari 20, Athens 11741
Opening hours: Thurday 2-8 pm / Friday 2-8 pm / Saturday 12-6 pm / Sunday 12-6 pm www.miscathens.com

Free entrance

*Myrto Xanthopoulou, Antonis Theodoridis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Madlen Anipsitaki (member of Collectif MASI), Filippos Vasiliou and Stefania Orfanidou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

In Memory of Memory
Nov 10, 2023–Nov 18, 2023
Atelier W, 6 avenue Weber 93500, Pantin, Paris

Opening on Friday, November 10th at 18:00 p.m.

Participants: Nicole Economides, Athanasios Kanakis, Athina Koumparouli, Sofia-Danae Vorvila
Curator: Ariana Kalliga

In Memory of Memory examines the interplay of ancestry, memory, and performance as historiography. It brings together five artists working with photography, sculpture, installation, and performance, as well as prints and ephemera, gathered during the artists’ visits to neighboring antique stores and flea markets, which formed the starting point for the artists’ research during their short-term residency at Atelier W. The exhibition borrows its title from the fictional memoir/travelogue by Maria Stepanova, which explores the complex histories embedded within souvenirs, letters, and family photographs. The narrator attends to the materiality of these objects as an attempt to overcome intergenerational silences and historical wounds. In the exhibition, ephemera and photographs act as prompts for the artists, several of whom translate this visual imagery into their artworks or respond to their cues in the form of improvisational scores. In Memory of Memory unfolds both within and beyond the boundaries of the city, conveying past and present memories of the urban environment. Throughout the duration of the residency, the exhibition space functioned as both a studio and a collective gathering space for daily activities, writing sessions, and rehearsals. The artworks on display were produced on-site, forming an assembly of lived traces in direct dialogue with each other.

Opening Hours:
Saturday, November 11th and Sunday, November 12th from 14:00 p.m. until 20:00 p.m.
or by appointment untill November 18th.

All participants are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows 2022

Desired (Im)possibilities opens on Thursday 9 November at Galeria Arte Graça in Lisbon with works by Eunice Gonçalves Duarte, Irit Batsry, Juliana Matsumura, Natalie Woolf, Sofia Sá, Pinelopi Triantafyllou, Lior Eshel, Laurence Bonvin, Tiago Rocha Costa και Andrea Paz.

There is a sense of order in nature, a pattern prescribed to things, a cyclical sequence that forms, nurtures, destroys, and recreates everything. And life invariably adheres to this order. From the changing seasons to birth and death, everything is part of a cycle. All living organisms are born, they grow, they consume or produce, and they eventually die, giving space for new life to come.
The exhibition features 10 works exploring different modes of dealing with the duality of [Im]possibilities. Some of them encompass personal experiences of success and failure, the interplay of doubt and certainty, hope and disappointment, reason and irrationality, or the visible and the unseen. While others question their artistic practices by experimenting with the boundaries of materials, and their representations.
Above all, “Desired (Im)possibilities” serves as a profound celebration of the human spirit, acknowledging its boundless potential to transform, recreate, adapt, reclaim, and continually reinvent itself.

Information:

Dates: 9 November – 26 November 2023
Opening: 9 November, 17:00
Curated by Alexia Alexandropoulou

Collective reading as practice

Although we perceive reading as primarily a solitary activity, for most people throughout history communal reading, that is to say reading aloud with others, has been the norm. Books have had audiences rather than readers. For example, Eric García-Mayer describes oratorial reading among Cuban literary exiles in the United States in the nineteenth century and Elizabeth McHenry investigates African-American reading societies in the twentieth century.[1] The labour of reading could be shared, acting as a catalyst for creating communities; it can even be the remedy in times of hardship, or it can shape new alliances amongst a newly-formed group of readers/listeners.

The programme Around the Shelf is a series of monthly gatherings, bringing together various practitioners across disciplines as facilitators for collective reading processes. Through these gatherings, we will be imagining what reading together can manifest. Reading groups have been historically one of the many tools that various feminist groups utilized as a way to create an empowering and safe environment for their communities. Echoing the feminist practice of giving voice to the voiceless,[2] this series of monthly gatherings invites guests from activism, literature, and visual arts, intending to create empowering and safer spaces for feminist and queer discourse.

Slowing down fast

The methodologies that will be employed aspire to establish a slower temporality of reading, inspired by the notion of Slow down fast, A toda raja[3] as articulated by Camila Marabio and Cecilia Vicuña. In their conversation, Marabio and Vicuña propose to slow down at full speed,[4] feeling a collective pulse as an antidote to the contemporary condition in Chile based on neoliberal monetary and currency policies and colonial oppression. Slowing down processes of reading defines the spirit of Around the Shelf, to develop slow, collective reading methodologies. The gatherings will not require prior preparation, as the group will be reading out loud excerpts from poems, essays, film scripts, artist books, amongst others, and stopping at every sentence or paragraph to reflect and brainstorm together.

When reading with others, we are becoming one whole collective reading body. As Marabio & Vicuña put it, “you are losing your Self and subtracting your-self from the continuity of an existent structure …the thinnest existence of a possible assurance of an “I” gets lost.”[5] It is this entry into a collective consciousness that this series aspires to explore, inviting us to become collective readers and listeners.

To listen with all our senses

Reading in institutions and academia comes with some sort of silence. Library spaces dictate a sonic order, amongst other things, and thus a specific way of approaching texts. How can we bring printed words to life by activating our senses? When reading this out loud, we become listeners of our voice or the voices of others; our ears slowly get used to different accents, timbres, and vocal tones. We can think of listening as a sonic correspondence of reaching out voices which are reflected to our ears; echoes of different subjectivities that move through space by means of sound. Considering the limitations of academia and institutions in relation to active listening and shared living experiences, this programme brings together sound practitioners and performers as facilitators for reading-listening sessions.

Take I with Deniz Kirkali, Thursday 9th November 2023, 8pm

This session, led by independent curator Deniz Kirkali, will initiate a series of collective readings, focusing on attentivity as a methodology for learning from and with others. Directing the attention to the body, this gathering will use material feminisms and posthuman studies as a grounding base for collective explorations on the “arts of noticing”, as articulated by anthropologist Anna Tsing. Deniz will introduce us to practices of attuning through examples from her curatorial work, speculating how we can live, work, feel, and experience differently. The group will also develop a slow reading methodology to delve into excerpts from Bayo Akomolafe’s writings, which call us to attune to the “wisdom of soil”. Drawing inspiration from alternative narratives, how can we challenge our entanglements with the all-living world, and challenge epistemological power?

Duration:
9th November 2023 – 13rd June 2024

Set dates & time:
Every second Thursday of the month (unless indicated otherwise) at 8pm

Curator:
Eirini Fountedaki*

Guests:
Federica Bueti, Vassilia Kaga, Deniz Kirkali, Danae Stefanou and others (tbc)

TAVROS
Anaxagora 33 (1st floor), 17778, Tavros, Greece

*Eirini Fountedaki is SNF Curatorial ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

[1] Eric García-Mayer, “Narrating Nation Aloud: Oratory, Embodied Reading Practices, and the Cuban Imaginary in Villaverde and Mariño’s El Independiente, “Folklife in Louisiana: Louisiana’s Living Traditions”, 2013, http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/lfmnarrating.html, accessed 15 October 2023; Elisabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

[2] Samia Malik in “Reading as Activism: the WOCI Reading Group” in Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice, ed. Heide Hinrichs, Jo-ey Tang, Elizabeth Haines, Antwerp: Pascale De Groote, 2000.

[3] Camila Marambio and Cecilia Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 2019.

[4] “A toda raja” is a Chilean expression with multiple colloquial uses. It can mean at full speed, intensely or with great sentiment. See Marambio and Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, 5.

[5] Marambio and Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, 10.

From November 18 to January 28, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the group exhibition Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below featuring the participation of acclaimed artists from Greece and abroad and showcasing a series of new productions, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again.

The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below focuses on the potential for creating corporeal archives, nonlinear knowledge transmission, and storytelling with unexpected cross-cultural affinities. The ephemeral, physicality, uncertainty, and performativity elements serve as critical starting points and accompany the audience through the viewing and participation process.

Through installations, painting, sculpture, sound, and performance, the exhibition seeks to redefine the boundaries of dance, reflecting on the (collective) body and its absence, memory, and the necessity of movement. It contemplates utopian declarations of dance subcultures, their glorification, thwarting, and commercial exploitation, hovering between desire, disappointment, and expectation. It examines the relationship between dance movements and community formation, as well as demands for social justice, portraying dance as a translinguistic activity for creating a new world: a delirious grammar that is impossible to parse, slippery in mind and unwieldy in the mouth, passing through muscle spasms, chemical compounds, machines and pixels.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below coincides with the celebration of “Mesosporitissa” connecting different historical periods of Elefsina while marking the transition into winter.

The opening of the exhibition features the performances by Odete and Nkisi and an all-night party with local and international Djs, Fofi Tsesmeli, Odete, Amateurboyz, Ayshel & GRΞTA.

Information:
Duration: November 18, 2023 – January 28, 2024
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Friday, 17.00 – 20.00
Saturday & Sunday, 13.00 – 20.00
Location: Old Oil Mill Factory
Opening: Saturday November 18, 20.00

Opening Programme:
20.00 | Opening
21.30 | Cicada/Cicala, Odete – Performance
22.15 | Nkisi – Performance
23.00 | DJ sets – Line-up
Fofi Tsesmeli
Odete
Amateurboyz
Ayshel
GRΞTA

Contributors:

Participating artists: Theodoros Giannakis / Viktor Gogas & Kostas Kostopoulos / Captain Stavros / Lito Kattou / Petros Moris / Nkisi / Katerina Papazissi / Georgia Sagri / George Sapountzis / Baratto & Mouravas / Flux Office / Greek Visions / Klaus Jurgen Schmidt / Odete / Diana Policarpo / Wu Tsang
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
Curatorial director: Zoi Moutsokou
Public Program / Publication: Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Architectural Design: Trail Practice
Research: Georgia Liapi
Production management: WILD REEDS
Texts: Leandros Kyriakopoulos, McKenzie Wark, Panos Giannikopoulos, Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Lighting: Aslight
Scaffolding: Greenskal

2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

*Theodoros Giannakis and Petros Moris are SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellows

The video-performance Construction Insight presents a process of exploration and shaping of a partially demolished construction site and the materials it contains. Simultaneously, this process is linked to the search for and shaping of human identity. The work constitutes an alchemical experiment with structural materials and bodies in a ritualistic journey inward.

Video-performance CONSTRUCTION INSIGHT
«The beauty and its rival»

Centrally located on Agias Eirinis Square in the heart of Athens, stands the shell of the old Athenian Hotel
“Byron”. Its construction began 190 years ago under the name Hotel “Anatoli” during the first half of the
19th Century (1833-39) when Athens had just become the capital of the newly established Greek state
(1834). It was the most distinguished hotel of the time, hosting prestigious receptions and galas for the
Athenian society. It is believed to have accommodated King Othonas upon his arrivals in Athens. Βetween
1839 and 1842, it had housed the National Observatory of Athens before relocating to the hill of Nymphs
in the historic area of Thissio. The ground floor contained a collection of small shops for clothes and
pesticides. In 1987 the building was classified as a historical monument by the Hellenic Ministry of
Culture.

In a city that we love to hate either because we don’t consider it to be ours, or we see ourselves as mere
bystanders or we like to complain, changes are constantly taking place. Considering these developments,
are we prepared? Does the new-old Athens keep us captive to its ideology? A course of visual ideas open
discussion on the future city model. Gotham city, Limnopolis, Athens is the new Berlin (without money
though), Athens/Kabul. This serves as inspiration for artists as they respond, along with conversations led
by architects, poets, engineers, and shopkeepers, to the conceptualization of the ‘ideal’ city model. The
shell of the old Athenian Hotel “Byron” which is undergoing restoration will host experimental
installations, screenings and performances, bringing after decades, new life the building’s empty rooms
and shops.

Noam Assayag, Katerina Botsari, Capten, Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos/
Odysseas Klissouras, Lah Porella, Helen Polychronidou, Natassa Poulantza, Hector Theoulakis,
Theodoros Zafeiropoulos.

Curated by: Georg Georgakopoulos

25 – 28.11.2023
Opening: Saturday, November 25, 19:00 – 22:00
Hours: Daily and weekends, 18:00 – 22:00
Former hotel «Byron»
38 Aiolou str. Athens 105 51, entrance from Agias Eirinis Square

CHEAPART / APART / F.O.T.A.
https://athensintersection.blogspot.com
www.cheapart.gr
www.apart-network.gr
fb: friendsoftrigonoathens

As part of the second phase of the Greek National Opera’s visual arts programme marking the centennial of Maria Callas’ birth, the Greek National Opera presents the exhibition titled UNBOXING CALLAS: An Archival Exploration of the Pyromallis Collection and the GNO Archive curated by Vassilis Zidianakis, to be presented on the second floor of the National Library of Greece and inside the GNO Foyer at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. The exhibition opens to the public on Sunday, 26 November 2023 at 17.00, and will run from 27 November through until 10 January, 10.00-21.00 daily. The GNO Year of Callas tribute programme is sponsored by the PPC (Public Power Corporation). This programme is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the GNO’s artistic outreach.

Taking the donation of the Dimitris Pyromallis Collection to the Greek National Opera Archive as his point of departure, ATOPOS cvc Artistic Director Vassilis Zidianakis invites us to discover the legendary La Divina anew by means of an artistic act of unboxing. The collection of Dimitris Pyromallis, which he recently donated to the Greek National Opera Archive, includes some 4,000 vinyl records, 6,000 CDs, hundreds of books, newspaper clippings, periodicals, thousands of photographs, autographs, handwritten notes, postage stamps featuring Callas’ likeness from various countries, medals minted in her honour, and some of her personal effects. At the age of four, Dimitris Pyromallis met Maria Callas by chance on the island of Zakynthos – this encounter left such an impression on him that, from the age of 20, he devoted his life to this collection on the art of Maria Callas.

Inspired by the act of unboxing made popular by online communities, this exhibition proposes an artistic and inter-disciplinary means of approaching, exploring, and understanding both the Greek National Opera Archive and the legend that surrounds the greatest opera singer of all time: Maria Callas. This Greek National Opera UNBOXING CALLAS exhibition is being held in partnership with ATOPOS cvc and the Atopos Unbound programme, and with the National Library of Greece and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. The exhibition fosters the feel of an open archive within which the curatorial team invite artists, conservators, archivists, and researchers to work, opening up its archival boxes to discover stories, memories, and objects relating to Callas but also the famous artist herself, as well as the ways in which she is still an inspiration in the fields of contemporary research, academic study, and artistic creation. The creation of an open archive is squarely aimed at giving the public direct access to these archival materials, but also to the approaches and narratives that frame them. Specifically, the exhibition brings to the fore the archival, conservation, and documentation practices that have played such a formative role in the design and structure of UNBOXING CALLAS.

Exhibited on the second floor of the National Library of Greece will be the Dimitris Pyromallis Collection in its entirety – discography, bibliography, rich photographic materials, and objects. Presented alongside it will be additional items drawn from the GNO’s historical archive that now also includes the photographic output of Kleisthenis Daskalakos relating to the GNO performances Maria Callas gave at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (Norma in 1960 and Medea in 1961), items from the archives of Leonidas Zoras and Achilleas Mamakis, and costume-related materials connected to Maria Callas’ performances in Greece that have been sourced from the GNO Costume Department.

Exhibited alongside these archival materials will be original artworks inspired by the Dimitris Pyromallis Collection – works created by the contemporary artists Angeliki Bozou, Petros Efstathiadis, Panayotis Evangelidis, Eleftheria Kotzaki, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Lykourgos Porfyris, Panos Profitis, Marios Stamatis, and Maria Varela, who were invited to explore, adapt, and re-delineate these archival materials in an attempt to offer up a freer, more subjective form of knowledge. On 26 November, the first day of the exhibition, the artist Angeliki Bozou will be presenting a performance at 19.00.

Presented in parallel inside the ground-floor Foyer of the Greek National Opera will be an original artwork by Alexis Fidetzis and Malvina Panagiotidi.

As part of the exhibition, on Monday through Thursday mornings from 10.00 to 13.00, preservation practices relating to the archive will be undertaken in real time. Specifically:

Α. In the Costume Conservation Workshop, two historic Maria Callas costumes will undergo invasive conservation treatments that include their cleaning, re-shaping, and stabilising, and the sensitive restoration of damaged areas.

Β. In the Paper Conservation Workshop, conservators will perform initial repair work on historic printed programmes created for Greek National Opera performances in which Maria Callas appeared.

C. At the Archiving Station, the documentation, archiving, and organisation of the photographic collection recently donated to the Greek National Opera by Dimitris Pyromallis will continue before the eyes of visitors.

Year of Callas tribute programme curator: Giorgos Koumendakis
UNBOXING CALLAS curator: Vassilis Zidianakis / ATOPOS cvc
Curatorial associate: Steffi Stouri
Consultant: Dimitris Pyromallis
Research associate: Sophia Kompotiati

With the artists: Angeliki Bozou, Petros Efstathiadis, Panayotis Evangelidis, Alexis Fidetzis – Malvina Panagiotidi, Eleftheria Kotzaki, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Lykourgos Porfyris, Panos Profitis, Marios Stamatis, and Maria Varela

In partnership with ATOPOS cvc and the Atopos Unbound programme

26 Νovember 2023 – 10 January 2024

Second floor of the National Library of Greece & GNO Foyer – SNFCC

10.00–21.00 daily

The exhibition opens to the public on 26 November 2023, at 17.00.

Free admission

*Angeliki Bozou, Petros Efstathiadis, Alexis Fidetzis – Malvina Panagiotidi, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Panos Profitis, Marios Stamatis, and Maria Varela are Visual Arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

BONE TO BONE exhibition, curated by Thanasis Chondros and Alexandra Katsiani.
Participating artists: D. Ameladiotis, G. Kaltsidis, Th. Karonis, N. Kryonidis, V. Mastrogiannaki & St. Mpampalos, F. Nuskas, S. Pehlivanidou, N. Varytimiadis.

With Stefanos Mpampalos in sound editing, Virginia Mastrogiannaki present the video yιantes / the painter and the girl, a reference to the work of Nikolaos Gyzis.
The painted portrait entitled yιantes by N. Gyzis is a daring work for its era (1878), both in terms of its incomplete painting gesture and its title itself, and therefore open to many interpretations.
Υiantes painted by N. Gyzis coexists and is exhibited in the National Gallery with his own portrait – slightly earlier – painted by his colleague Ludwig Thiersch (1865).

The exhibition “BONE TO BONE” will run until Thursday 14 December 2023
Daily from 18:00 to 22:00
To Pikap Kato, 57 Olympou str, Thessaloniki, Greece

*Virginia Mastrogiannaki is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2019)

Elli Antoniou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow) participates in two exhibitions in London.

29/11 Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses
Curated by Edoardo Monti
Bernston Bhattachatjee, London, W1T 3NE

30/11 things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Curated by Kollektiv Collective
Tabula Rasa Gallery, London, N1 6AQ

Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses opens on Wednesday, 29 November 6-8pm, at Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery. Guest-curated by Edoardo Monti, the exhibition is shining a spotlight on the creative endeavours of twelve artists who recently completed a month-long residency at his prestigious Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy. Monti has carefully curated a selection of artists who are evolving the craft of their artistic field and finding international recognition as ones to watch. Exhibited artists are Hiva Alizadeh, Elli Antoniou, Andrea Bocca, Bea Bonafini, Thomas De Falco, Kirsten Deirup, John Fou, David Gardner, Delphine Hennelly, Eliza Hopewell, Madeleine Roger-Lacan, and Hannah Tilson.

As the founder and driving force behind one of the world’s leading residencies, Monti places paramount importance on his social duty to nurture and champion emerging talent. In doing so, he has established a sense of community and refuge at Palazzo Monti, where resident artists become part of his family and home. Al Dente: A Feast for the Senses is an example of Monti’s curatorial household and aptitude for bringing together artists with diverse practices and

Backgrounds.

—

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold opens on Thursday, 30 November, 6–8pm, at Tabula Rasa Gallery. Guest-curated by London-based curatorial collective Kollektiv Collective, this collaborative and site-specific group exhibition features newly commissioned and existing works by artists Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover and Richard Dean Hughes.

In an attempt to think the unthought and give form to the formless, things fall apart; the centre cannot hold explores an aesthetic of rebuilding. Seeking potential in slippage and dissonance, it imagines a mode of perception turning to non-quantifiable ways of understanding. Relying on opacity and ambivalence as sources of knowledge, the exhibition dilutes the familiar and reverses the definite, searching for liberation in the absence of anticipation. The gallery becomes trapped in the vacuum of its own space, where the facades have collapsed and in the ruins of certainty, secrets are revealed in whispers. Alongside each other, the works of Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover and Richard Hughes defy expectations, demanding questions be answered otherwise.

The Hellenic Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family Affairs, completing its “Art, a silent revolution” program, presents an exhibition and a conference on 5, 6, and 7 December 2023 at the Athens Conservatoire.

It presents ten young artists and collectives from all over Greece selected through an open call to express how their work (visual arts, moving image, performance) can serve as a dynamic tool of social transformation and change. The program creates a forum for discussion on how to address violence, abuse, harassment, and bullying. By acknowledging and examining similar traumatic cases, the artists present their perspectives, suggesting ways to heal and prevent them individually and collectively. Their works transmit messages against oppression, stereotypes, prejudices, and inequalities.

How can young people build a new framework of empowerment that fosters visibility and inclusivity for all individuals? What is their role in awakening and shaping an egalitarian society where culture is the central drive for development? A parallel conference will bring together professionals from art and culture, representatives of the university community, politicians, educators, sociologists, and psychologists.

Participating artists: Dimitra Stavropoulou, Dimitris Kapetanou, Virginia Russolo, Eleanna Balesi, Sia-Efstathia Koutli, Elina Demirtzioglou & Aristeidis Lappas, Georgette Alimperti & Niki Theodoridi, Fotini Tatsi, Giorgos Palaeologos, Angelos Papadopoulos.

The program is curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis / K-Gold Temporary Gallery.

Opening: Tuesday 5/12, 19:00, Ω2 Complex, Athens Conservatoire
Exhibition opening hours: 6-7/12, 10:00-20:00
Conference opening hours: 6-7/12, 10:00-18:00

*Aristeidis Lappas, Angelos Papadopoulos and Nicolas Vamvouklis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

THAT WHICH WAS IS NOW NO MORE

On Tuesday December 5th 2023, from 18:00 until 21:00, the group show titled That which was is now no more opens at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.

Participating artists:
Chronis Botsoglou, Nikos Komiotis, Natalia Manta, Eva Mitala, Doreida Xhogu

Curated by Galini Lazani

The exhibition will be on view until 27.01.2024

—
Some issues are hard to talk about. Probably because they are hard to comprehend. And some concepts are hard to narrow down. The title of this exhibition encloses everything that changes around us and shakes us up. Animate and inanimate beings, our environment, the people that surround us and ourselves. Things that perish, change, are reborn. That which was is now no more. Yet, it is something new.

The artists that present their work in this exhibition each deal, through their own thoughts and means, with these notions of change and loss, but also with the creation that eventually results from them.

Doreida Xhogu’s video, accompanied by a series of small wooden sculptures reminiscent of relics, depicts the personal ritual created by the artist in order to come to terms with her father’s death, which occurred during her absence. In his workplace, a mine in Albania, the artist constructed a huge human effigy out of straw and tar, which she then bedded for one night in her house and finally burned. The way she came up with to process this painful feeling of loss turned out to be her own personal creation after all.

Τhe new series of Eva Mitala‘s silkscreen prints also debate loss, in a sense. A loss of a completely different kind though, not so permanent and stagnant, but rather one that points to a shifting condition. Through her research on Chile’s Atacama Desert and the life of the indigenous inhabitants of the region, she incorporates in her work, through a mixture of digital and traditional techniques, issues that concern us all. Issues that become tangible in a “world in transition”, as she calls it, such as the extinction of traditional practices, languages, natural habitats. However, through extinction comes rebirth in the form of new, different ways of creation, as culture always finds its way to express itself.

Furthermore, the works presented by Natalia Manta, which always give the viewer the feeling that they come from or are intended for some kind of ritual, also deal with the life-giving power of loss and danger, since they take the form of sculptural totems in which one can recognize the bearing of some new life, yet at the same time of some unidentifiable threat as well. “Essentially, the entire installation reflects a prolonged suspension, in which existential anguish is established and defined as hope”, the artist mentions.

These thoughts, which contemplate the agony of human existence and its transfiguration into creation, lead to Chronis Botsoglou‘s series of works in which he portrays his mother during the days of her sickness. Their association to the exhibition is not about old age and death, but about the dementia that afflicted her amid her final years and everything that comes along with it; the deterioration of a person’s consciousness, personality and identity. “The disintegration of the face”, as Botsoglou described it referring to his mother, subsequently relates to Nikos Komiotis’ painting.

The main morphological element of Komiotis’ work is the disfiguration of human characteristics, due to which the figures he depicts appear to fluctuate between a lifeless and an animalistic condition of being. His frequent inspiration from the sequence of film frames, where for split seconds the features get mixed up, jumbled and lost, reminds us once again that subtle changes can ultimately lead to a new spectacle, a new creation.

Galini Lazani
November 2023

Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center / 48, Armatolon & Klefton Street, Athens 114 71
tel: +30 210 6439466 / fax:+30 210 6442852 / www.art-tounta.gr / [email protected]

Visiting hours: Tue – Thu: 15:00 – 20:00, Wed – Fri: 12:00 – 20:00, Saturday: 12:00 – 16:00

*The title of the exhibition was inspired by a phrase from Thomas Hardy’s novel A pair of blue eyes: “…she that was is now no more”.

The title of the new evolving project is ‘The Meaning of Queer Ritual Fusion 1’, arising from the shared need of four individuals to coexist. Is there a meaning in making art today? The goal is for this sharing with the audience to be the first of many.

2,3,4,9,10 December 2023, 21.00
Location: Μ54
Μενάνδρου 54, Αθήνα
https://goo.gl/maps/HkLxuPEtYDYSWM7k8

Creation-Participants: Pagona Boubasakou, Angelos Papadopoulos, Elpiniki Saripanidou, Elsa Siskou
Concept – Directorial Supervision: Angelos Papadopoulos
Music: Nikos Antonopoulos
Costume Design – Construction: Dynno Dada
Lighting Design: Janos Mazis
Dramaturgical Contribution: Elena Novakovic
Trailer, Poster: Katerina Tsakiri
Make-up Art: Emmanuel Kamakaris
Special Thanks: Kosmas Lapidis, Fay Tzouma, Charlotte Virgile

Shifting
shifting adjective UK /ˈʃɪf.tɪŋ/ US /ˈʃɪf.tɪŋ/ always changing or moving

Curated by Florent Frizet

w/
Despina Charitonidi

Leo Chesneau

Nadja Geer

Agata Ingarden

Katerina Komianou

Danai Kotsaki

Anna Lascari

Nicolas Melemis

Dimitris Tampakis

Eleni Tomadaki

Marios Stamatis

Camille Yvert

Opening Saturday 20/01/2024, 7-10pm

Until 17/02/2024

Opening hours Wed to Sat 4-8pm

One Minute Space
Marathonos 71, Athens 10435

T: +30 6949085521
[email protected]

*Katerina Komianou, Eleni Tomadaki & Marios Stamatis are SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellows

Despina Zacharopoulou’s (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021) text “Contracts as Protocols of Governmentality in Performance Art” is now available as an Open Access article in Performance Research Journal ‘On Meeting’ Vol. 28, Issue 2 (2023), edited by Simon Bayly and Johanna Linslay. Cover Image: Mark Robson.

Abstract
This essay raises questions regarding meeting protocols as a form of art practice. Drawing on recent examples from my performance works, I initiate a discussion about how contracts in performance art might operate as protocols of governmentality, offering morphogenetic structures towards other ways of ‘meeting with’. The term ‘governmentality’ is used to designate all those ‘regulatory apparatuses (dispositives)’ that exercise power via protocols of economy and circulation, to engender new subjectivities (Foucault 2007), whereas the term ‘morphogenesis’ is employed to describe processes where the genesis of forms follows a sensuous logic of structural disposition or tendency that organizes disparities of potential events. One could argue that in the 1970s, several performance artists adopted contractual methods of negotiating their meeting with an audience in order to critically expose the power dynamics existing within everyday hierarchical relations (O’Dell 1998). In so doing, contracts often demarcated the roles of the artist and the audience from the outset of the live work, as already fixed, separate subjectivities, thus sustaining binary essentialist categories (for example subject vs. object, and so on) as met within the philosophical tradition of dialectics (Golding 2021). However, in my performance works brought forward, contracts operate as protocols of governmentality, offering morphogenetic structures governing the thickness and the porosity of boundaries within the ways that people come to meet with one another, without pre-determining any final outcomes or assigning specific roles to the parties involved. Contracts in this case establish a set of meeting protocols that generate and distribute intensities through the organization of areas of possibilities for the emergence of potential events. And it is within this shifting topography of events that subjectivities emerge through the ways that bodies affect and are affected by other bodies via processes of use.

For a full PDF version of Despina Zacharopoulou’s article, please visit: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/13528165.2023.2260705?needAccess=true&fbclid=IwAR2acYHFiB-oWwzIMMv5OJtS35xA-vC9a_oyOJgGXmFdBHR_a21dEt3ICCw

For the whole Issue of Performance Research ‘On Meeting’, please visit:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprs20/28/2

A programme of artists’ moving image works which share reflections on technology, ritual and the more-than-human world.

This evening of screenings includes works by Patricia Dominguez, Kyriaki Goni, Agnieszka Polska, Laure Prouvost, Tabita Rezaire, Selvagem/Ailton Krenak, and Emilija Škarnulytė. The programme will be accompanied by live interventions by artists Kyriaki Goni and Patricia Dominguez.

An Act of Wonder and Gratitude was originally curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, Serpentine Head of Ecologies, as part of the Woods: More-than-Human-Curiosity symposium. Organised by are-events.org, the event takes place annually in the Orlické Mountains, Czech Republic. Woods operates at the intersection of contemporary art, the landscape, human health, and interspecies coexistence.

Serpentine Cinema: An Act of Wonder and Gratitude
Part of Serpentine Ecologies
Offsite / Ciné Lumière, Institut Français du Royaume-Uni, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DW
Monday 12 February 2024, 7-9.30pm
PRICE: £9, £7 CONC

Programme:

Patricia Dominguez, Matrix Vegetal, 2022

Emilija Škarnulytė, Sunken Cities, 2021

Kyriaki Goni, The Mountain Islands Shall Mourn us Eternally (Data Garden Dolomites), 2022

Tabita Rezaire, Premium Connect, 2016

Laure Prouvost, Into all that is here, 2015

Agnieszka Polska, The Book of Flowers, 2023

Selvagem/Ailton Krenak, Time and Love, 2022

*Kyriaki Goni is SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellow (2018)