Eirene Efstathiou is a visual artist working with a variety of different media, from painting and printmaking to performance and small-scale installations. Her practice focuses on collective and archival memory, sentiment and affect and investigates the imprint these elements bear on the public sphere. She holds a Studio Art Diploma and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2013) from Tufts University in Boston, where she studied painting and printmaking. She is also a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and of the Athens School of Fine Arts (MFA 2010) where she is also doing her PhD since 2013, for which she was awarded a scholarship by the Onassis Foundation. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2019) and Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (2017) and included in group exhibitions and collections at DEPO Istanbul (2019); National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, (2018); the collection of the Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art for documenta 14, Kassel (2017); DESTE foundation’s collection at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2017); the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2017); and the Benaki Museum, Athens (2016). In 2009 she was the recipient of DESTE Foundation’s DESTE Prize and in 2019 she was awarded a scholarship to complete her doctoral research by the NEON Organisation for Culture and Development. Efstathiou lives and works in Athens.
Antigone Theodorou is a performance artist based in Athens. She is mainly interested in live art and performance but is also active in installation, video, photography, poetry and in areas where the above fields interact or converge. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts (Visual Arts, 2009-14). In 2011-12 she attended lessons at the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. In 2016 she completed the postgraduate performance research program Le corps de l’artiste at the Superior Institute of Fine Arts of Besançon (ISBA) in France, with a Scholarship from NEON Organisation for Culture and Development. During the same period, she presented her thesis, Between two worlds: Performance and Animality. With the female body serving as her main material, she invents and composes artistic actions, exploring the spaces lying between humanity and animality, the poetic and the political, as well as nature and artificial culture in order to integrate and transform aspects of modern culture and find a space in it for those denied a voice.Her work has been presented in Athens, Thessaloniki, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Finland, Switzerland and Germany (Benaki Museum, 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, documenta 14, Theater Academy of Helsinki, FUGA Budapest Center of Architecture, etc.) She has collaborated, among others, with Valentine Verhaeghe, Michel Collet, Nikos Navridis, Johannes Deimling, Francesco Kiais, Filippo Minelli, Maria Papadimitriou, Rick Lowe, Dimosthenis Agrafiotis, Ieke Trinks, Valerian Maly, George Drivas, Manos Tsangaris, Julia Strauss and Lucille Calmel.
Anestis Ioannou (b.1992, Athens) is a visual artist living and working in Athens. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts and of the Sciences of Art, University of Ioannina (2015), which awarded him the Erasmus Scholarship to study at the Fine Arts School of Castilla la Mancha (2014) in Spain. He holds a Master’s Degree (Master of Fine Arts) from LUCA School of Arts (2018 in Brussels. Ioannou’s practice explores the relationship between the urban environment, social fabric and the construction of our own subjectivities, while it reflects on the process of reading a place through objects, simple actions or even experiences. He has participated in exhibitions, projects and artist-in-residency programs in Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, Serbia and France.
Ioannou is the co-founder of NOTUS Studio, an artist-run space and non-profit artist-in-residency program in Athens (est. 2017). He is also the co-founder of DELIVERART, a collective project proposing a mobile art experience that takes place in the streets of Athens (est. 2019).
Byron Kalomamas (b. 1993, Athens) studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and completed his Master’s at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In his work, he combines interactive mechanisms as performative tools with visual essays in the form of video, while he is interested in developing transparent and shareable methodologies, which he can subsequently incorporate in his work. Often in the context of collaborative practice, he explores the notion of infrastructures —whether material or immaterial— and of their ability to support and perpetuate displaced counter-narratives.
He has participated in group shows and screenings at Chisenhalle Gallery and Seventeen Gallery in London,Kunstbau in Munich and at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens. His work has been supported by the Schilizzi Foundation, the Gilbert Bayes Foundation and other organisations. Between 2013 and 2016 he was an active member of the artist-run initiative Circuits & Currents in Athens, while in 2019 he co-founded, along with Sepake Angiama, the Module for temporary Infrastructures, an ongoing research series presented at St Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp.
Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, born 1981, Athens. Lives and works in Athens. The mediums he favours are painting, text, sound and photography.
Solo Exhibitions: Songs (with Athanasios Argianas, H.E.R.O. Gallery, Amsterdam, 2018); Breakwater (alternative exhibition space, Athens, 2015); How can one remember the thirst? (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2011); Bones are tight (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2008); Numb (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2006).
Selected Group Exhibitions: documenta 14 (artistic director Adam Szymczyk , curator Katerina Tselou, Athens and Kassel, 2017); Reverb, New Art from Greece (curators Evita Tsokanta and Eirene Efstathiou, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2014); Hell as Pavilion (curator Nadja Argyropoulou, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013); 2nd Athens Biennale (curator Christoforos Marinos, Athens, 2009); Anathena (curators Marina Fokidis and Marina Gioti, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, 2006).
Anthi Kougia was born in Athens in 1989. She is a performance maker and since 2015 she works as creator, director and dramaturge. After graduating from the Department of Theatre Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, she completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as another course under the title of PACAP- Advanced Programme of Creation in Performing Arts in Forum Danca, Lisbon. Her work has been presented in the UK, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Italy [Nunnery Gallery, London (UK), Camden People’s Theatre, London (UK), Spazio Teatro NO’HMA, Milan (IT), Performance Art Depot, Mainz (DE), ZdB Negócio, Lisbon (PT), Rua das Gaivotas / Teatro Praga, Lisbon (PT)]. Recently, she completed her first collaboration for the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera with the queer opera Orfeas2020 conceived by FYTA.
Regarding her artistic practice, the visual environment plays a significant role in her performance pieces. She works with speech, movement, sound, video and almost always in collaboration with other artists.
Keywords of her performance practice that keep appearing in her pieces are the following: waiting room, change of given perspectives, distortion, absurdity, the invisible, absence, irony, kitsch and entertainment.
Sevastiana Konstaki (Rhodes, 1989) graduated from the University of Thessaly with a Bachelor’s in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Architectural Design, entitled INSTEAD (parapoesis). Her research interests and artistic practice focus on the ‘in-between’, exploring objects-narratives on the reconnection of the human body with its imagined realities, such as psycho-woven clothes, collages, maps, drawings, art-books and representational tools intersecting between architecture, art and fashion. She collaborates with artists from multiple artistic fields (visual artists, performers and interpreters, social artists, etc.). She is part of the Institute of Post-Epicurean Garden (iPeg) team, which organised a series of meetings and philosophical discussions in Athens, and has participated in various projects, such as the group exhibition Emfylo-poiein. to construct the gender at a.antonopoulou Gallery (2019), documenta 14 (2017), and the Victoria Square Project (2017/2018).
Aristeidis Lappas (Athens, 1993) lives and work in Athens. He studied for a BA in the University of West England, Bristol, UK, during which time he also attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy, under an Erasmus scholarship. He has exhibited his work in a number of groups shows, including Polymorphic Entrancing Topos, P.E.T Projects (Athens, 2019); Part II, The Breeder gallery ( Athens, 2019); Break Time Contemplations, Transformer gallery ( Washington D.C., 2018); and Athens and its Periphery in Regards to Contemporary Painting, curated by Hugo Wheeler, The Breeder gallery ( Athens, 2017). He is represented by The Breeder gallery in Athens.
Αimilia Liontou (b. 1991, Athens) lives and works between Athens and Linz. She graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and holds a Master’s Degree in Time-based Media from The University of Arts and Design Linz, where she studied under a Lillian Voudouris Foundation scholarship. She also attended classes at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow (Intermedia Bachelor of Fine Arts) and the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin (MA in Spatial Strategies) as part of the Erasmus exchange programme. She was a member of the project space Circuits and Currents (2014-2016), while she participated in the artist research programs Survival Kit and InSitu. She has been selected to take part in the Local Artist Residency programme of the cultural organisation Atelierhaus Salzamt (Linz, 2020-22). In her works, she examines the ways through which certain conditions can change the perception of space and the potential impact on a person’s life and his/her personality. Her work is characterised by interdisciplinary practice, research and use of different materials and mediums, depending on the thematic. At the same time, she avoids the classical ‘studio practice’ and prefers to develop smaller or larger in situ ‘situations’, which are placed on the liminal space between art and reality and frequently make use of humor. Her work has been presented in Greece and abroad.
Maria Louizou is a Greek sculptor born and based in Athens. The main body of her work consists of sculptural installations embedded with vocal compositions she creates herself. She studied sculpture at the Athens School οf Fine Arts (ASFA) and theory of music (classical and electronic) in the Athens Conservatoire. In 2019, her work was presented in New York, as part of the annual benefit exhibition Tabula Rasa running under the artistic direction of Robert Wilson’s; as well as in Beijing, where she was awarded the prize China Taiyuan International Youth Metal Sculpture 2018. She has also shown work as part of the Theorimata exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST). She participated in the Summer Residency of the Watermill Center in New York, under donations from collectors Cornelia Long and Franz Wassmer. In 2019, Sinestetica gallery in Rome hosted her first solo show, 22°C.
Ilektra Maipa (born in 1989) is a visual artist based in Thessaloniki, Greece. She studied Painting at the Department of Visual & Applied Arts of the University of Western Macedonia and graduated with distinction. She continued her studies at the Manchester School of Art, Metropolitan University of Manchester (MΑ, Hons). Maipa works across a range of media, including drawings, digital collages, installations, performances for camera and text. Her work was has been presented at the Manchester Art Fair ( UK, 2019); House of Culture (Rethymno, 2016); K-Gold Gallery (Lesvos, 2016); Experimental Center for the Arts (Thessaloniki, 2014); Greek Culture Foundation (Berlin, 2013); Action Field Kodra (Thessaloniki, 2012) Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (Thessaloniki, 2011). She has also worked with the Marina Abramovic Institute and the Benaki Museum. Since 2019 she has been collaborating with Yiannis Ziogas, Tim Brennan and Dave Griffiths on the International Residency Exchange programme Nomadic Itinerary between Prespa/Florina and Allenheads/Manchester. The programme enables students to participate in a unique nomadic experience and is part of the wider Visual March to Prespes network of walking and sound artists. It is hosted jointly by the Department of Visual and Applied Arts University of Western Macedonia and the Department of Art and Performance, Manchester School of Art.
Born in 1984, in Athens, Yorgos Maraziotis holds a Master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. He has also studied Silkscreen at the School of Visual Arts New York City and holds a First-Class degree in Visual Arts from the Wolverhampton University. He uses various media, such as sculpture, installation and publications. His multidisciplinary practice focuses on conceptual processes that revisit past civilisations and attempt to translate them into today’s culture. He sculpturally intervenes in space and develops intimate, participatory situations that explore domesticity, question contemporary habitation and study the contrast between the real and the fictitious. Participants of his artworks are asked to shift their traditional viewpoint and think with their bodies. His artworks often take on elements of gestural narrative and attempt to combine diametrically opposed notions, such as the private/the public, pleasure/discontent or danger/safety. His work has been exhibited internationally, in galleries, art institutions and museums including, among others, the Marres – House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht); AC Institute, (New York); Box Freiraum (Berlin); 7th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (Greece); School of Visual Arts New York City; Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp; as well as the museums CICA (South Korea), Matadero (Madrid), Benaki (Athens), and Tinguely (Basel). He is a former resident artist at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Alkistis Mavrokefalou (born in Athens, 1993) lives and works in Athens, Greece. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (2014) from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford and her Master of Fine Arts (2017) from the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Her work is centred on the coexistence of frailty and durability observed in organic shreds found in nature (such as flower petals, exoskeletons, etc) and on the elliptical, illusory presence of these fragments within their surroundings. Her practice is an effort to communicate their elusive, elliptical essence through structures that play with the perception of depth and surface. She has taken part in several group shows, including, more recently: Matrix Akashic Fields Forever, Hydra School Projects (Greece, 2020); Coffins of Black, Coffins of Luck, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (Athens, 2019); Kypselian Salon, Snehta Gallery and Residency (Athens, 2019); The shell, Space18 (Thessaloniki, 2019); An Earthly Matter, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (Athens, 2018); Rooms18, Kappatos Gallery (Athens, 2018).
Irini Miga (b. Greece, lives and works between New York and Athens, Greece) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of sculpture, installation, video, sound, text and everyday performativity.
Irini finds humble, anti-monumental gestures and giving value to the minor and otherwise neglected of immense importance. In her practice, she creates constellations of humble gestures that call for close examination. By examining the way in which we apprehend and perceive our surroundings, her work engages with the memory of place, starting from the point of origin and continuing all the way to the present. This impetus manifests itself in the form of reconstructions of sites and objects of personal and not only significance. She is particularly fascinated by the language of objects that surround our everyday reality; the dialogues and shifting relationships of axes such as physical space, form and utility, sculpture and painting.
Miga studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, London’s Central Saint Martins College, and received her Master in Fine Arts from Columbia University. Recent solo shows include: Reflections, at Atlanta Contemporary; Away in Another Way of Saying Here, at Essex Flowers gallery, in NY; An Interval at Flyweight Projects in NY; and group shows such as Room for Failure at Piero Atchugarry gallery in Miami; Tomorrow’s Dream, at Neuer Essener Kunstverein in Essen; Scraggly Beard Grandpa, at Capsule Shanghai, in China; The Best is the Least We Can Do, at Atlanta Contemporary; The Equilibrists, organized by the New Museum in New York, the DESTE Foundation and shown in the Benaki Museum in Athens. Miga has been honored residencies by several organizations including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Workspace Program; the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art Residency Program; The Fountainhead Residency; and The Watermill Center. Her work belongs to collections such as The European Central Bank Collection, the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art / Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens, Greece and other international private collections.
Christos Mouchas (b. 1994) studied at the University of Sussex, UK. His practice includes performances focusing on the artist-audience relationship and dynamics through motion and contact, as well as visual artworks and installations.
His works have been presented at the Onassis Stegi, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival and The Performance Shop, the Marina Abramović Institute, the Dance House Lemesos, the K-Gold Temporary Gallery in Lesvos, and the Talkin’ Heads hair salon in Athens. Moreover, he has collaborated with magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar China and AnOther; and the brands Christian Dior and Digitaria, among others. He has also participated in the NEON Curatorial Exchange program ran by the Whitechapel Gallery. He lives and works in Athens.
Sofia Dona is an artist and architect. In 2018 she was awarded with the City of Munich Prize for Architecture and in 2015 with the Fulbright scholarship for Greek Artists. Her work is exhibited in various spaces such as the Μunicipal Institute of Art and Culture in Tijuana (2019), the association Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbKin Berlin (2017), the Foundation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torinο (2016) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (2013). In July 2020 she presented the work Macho Sounds/Gender Noise at the Staatsgallerie Stuttgart museym in collaboration with Daphne Dragona. In 2019 she presented the solo exhibition Voyageurs at Kunstpavillon in Innsbruck, and the site-specific work Applaus at the Munich Central Train Station, in the context of the public art program of the City of Munich. She has co-curated the Aphrodite* queer feminist film festival (Athens & Epidaurus festival 2018 and 2019) and the projects Enjoy Y(our) State of Emergency (nGbK, Berlin, 2014); New Babylon Revisited (Goethe Institute Athens, 2014); and On Board (Goethe Institute Athens, 2013). As a member of the Errands group, she has participated in exhibitions with projects such as the Epicurean Garden (Matera Cultural Capital, 2019), Summer Ladders(1st Istanbul Design Biennial, 2012) and Transporting Utopia (2nd Athens Bienniale, 2009).
Myrto Xanthopoulou was born in Helsinki in 1981. She lives and works in Athens. She studied fine arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts, and art history at Deree – The American College of Athens. Her practice is characterized by the use of everyday materials, handicraft and text. Her work consists of installations, sculptures and drawings, which attempt to articulate a poetic of the ordinary and the intimate, the unbearable and the silly. In 2020 she presented her fourth solo show in Athens, titled ΜΠΟΥΦΑΝ, and she has participated in various exhibitions in Greece and abroad, at museums, galleries and independent art spaces.
Konstantinos Pettas (b. 1988, Patras) studied Fine Arts and Art Sciences at the University of Ioannina (2011) and has completed his postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London (MA Sculpture, 2015) undera Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation scholarship. His practice explores the structures of existence and production within the context of an economy in constant flux. His engagement with the psychological, emotional and political charge of materials and space seeks to maintain the universal human experience through the coexistence of sculpture, video-performance and photography. Recently, his research is focusing increasingly on the critique of the idea of free time, the binary of labour and leisure and especially the idea of the artist’s displaced labour. His work has been presented in group shows, like the 15th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (Thessaloniki/Rome) and venues such as: Camden Art Centre (London), 3 137 (Athens), Alserkal Avenue (Dubai) and Chalton Gallery (London).
Dimitris Zampopoulos is an architect raised in Athens, in the shadow of ruins both ancient and modern. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (2017) and at the National School of Architecture Paris LaVillette (ENSAPL, 2015). His work delves into issues and themes related to monuments, the handling of symbols and identity-building, exploring the ways in which these elements interact with each other but also with various forms of power and political or economic order. In the last years, he has participated in a number of exhibitions in Athens and collaborated with brands, architecture studios and art organisations (KORRES natural products, BLP architects, Athens Biennale, etc.).