Amalia Vekri’s work through painting and occasionally sculpture, writing or sound, explores alternative portraitures of the female body, as well as the ways in which it is presented and represented in our current digitalized era. Her work reflects on female empowerment and transcendental nature, within a world of constant flux and ambiguity. Selected recent exhibitions include: Sisterhood (Korai project space, Cyprus, 2021); My Perversion is the Belief in Art (Pori Art Museum, Finland, 2020-21); Perfumed Envelopes Travel: Avalon of the Heart, with Valinia Svoronou (P.E.T Projects, Athens, Greece, 2020); Paris Internationale with Wschód gallery (Paris, France, 2019); The Breath that Leaves me, Stay Inside (part of Aarhus gallery weekend, curated by Corporum Art, Denmark, 2019); Nowhereland (Galerie Utopia, Hamburg, Germany, 2019); The Same River Twice (organized jointly by the DESTE Foundation & New Museum New York and presented at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, 2019); On the Risings and Settings of the Stars, solo exhibition (Aetopoulos, Athens, Greece, 2019); Curved Arrows (Kunstraum Am Schauplatz, Vienna, Austria, 2019); The Hunger – Catbox Contemporary, with Ian Swanson (Hot Wheels Projects, Athens, Greece, 2019); Schmaltz (Guimaraes, Vienna, Austria, 2018). She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021). She is the program director of Haus N Athen and a founding member of the project Asthenia. She is currently based in Athens.
Vasilis Zarifopoulos (1983) lives and works in Athens. Ηe studied at the University of the Aegean and at Düsseldorf Art Academy. In his latest works, he has been exploring concepts and processes relating to communication, which he then links to elements of his own biography. He has collaborated with institutions and other creative thinkers and exhibited in a number of art venues. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Despina Zacharopoulou is a performance artist born in Arcadia, Greece, currently working between London and Athens, while also holding the position of the Academic Leader of the Contemporary Art Summer School at the Royal College of Art (London). Coming from an intra-disciplinary academic and professional background across the fields of architecture (National Technical University of Athens), fine arts (Athens School of Fine Arts) and costume design (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp – on a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation), Despina is currently in the process of completing her practice-led PhD in Philosophy & Fine Art (Performance) at the Royal College of Art (as an Onassis Foundation scholar). Her practice investigates performance as surface and event of parrhesia, aiming at reconstituting philosophy as embodied practice and method towards a life which is radically other. Her work has been presented at events of global impact, such as: AS ONE by NEON Οrganization for Culture and Development and the Marina Abramović Institute (Benaki Museum, Athens, 2016); London Frieze (2016, 2017); A Possible Island? by the Marina Abramović Institute & the 1st Bangkok Art Biennale (Bacc, Bangkok, 2018-19); DataLoam (Angewandte Innovation Lab, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2019), ME/YOU YOU/ME (Gallery Sensei, London, 2016); Belgium is Happening (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp & Royal Academy of Fine Art Antwerp, Belgium, 2013), etc. Publications include articles in: The NY Times, The Nation (Thailand), CNN Greece, Liberal newspaper (Greece), etc. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Georgios Karamanolakis (Korinth, 1982) is a contemporary artist and composer. He holds a degree in the field of conceptual art and philosophy from the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and an MA in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine Art. In 2000 he created the OMIO art collective, a team that focuses on large scale in-situ installations and experimental films. He has participated in many group and solo shows and has held lectures and presentations in Greece and abroad. Since 2017 he has been producing the Athens Inner City Broadcast show for the experimental London art radio station Resonance Extra. Musically he is active as a solo project under his own name, composing experimental electronic music and noise; and is also the person behind the bands ΟΔΟΣ 55 (Odos 55) and Yorgas Helmet. He has collaborated with many musicians and artists from around the world, such as Jean Mark Foussat (France), Hiroshi Hasegawa (Japan) and Daniel Menche (US), and has performed his music live alongside musicians such as Drew Mac Dowell from Coil (Scotland), Phill Niblock (US) and others. His work has been presented in magazines and publications such as Frieze, Wire, Blow Up and many others. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
The work of Giorgos Kontis (b.1981 Athens) focuses on abstract painting and on its function as an image. Giorgos studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, at the Academy of Visual Arts (AdBK) in Munich and at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). He holds an MFA from the St.Joost School of Art & Design in Breda (the Netherlands) and recently completed his practice-based PhD in Painting, at the Royal College of Art in London, on the notion of authenticity. He lives and works in Berlin and Athens. Recent shows include: Mother Tongue, Crux Galerie Athens (solo, curated by Katerina Nikou); fAN Archive, Vienna Art Foundation, Parallel Vienna 2018, Vienna (Exhibition concept/design by Herwig Müller); The Materiality of the Painterly Event, City of Athens Arts Centre (curated by Denys Zacharopoulos); Close, Closer, Fading, Lychee One Gallery, London (curated by Jonathan Miles); Project 1 // On Authorship, Space-Projects, Amsterdam (curated by Maud Oonk); Neither Innocent Nor Guilty, Daily Lazy Projects, Athens (curated by Giorgos Kontis); Bow Open, Ian Kiaer’s studio (solo project), London; O, Kunstbuero, Vienna (with Just Quist); The Same Sky, Lepsien Art Foundation, Düsseldorf. Talks include: Cultural Identity, Europe & Authenticity, Royal College of Art in London, with Gilane Tawadros and Luc Tuymans; Rijksakademie Open Studios, with Camiel van Winkel (Amsterdam); Authenticity in the Act of Painting symposium, De Pont Museum Tilburg (the Netherlands); TECHNE: Memory and Perception conference, Rich Mix (London). He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Eleni Kordali is a visual artist living and working in Athens. She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2010 – 2016), where she also completed her Master’s in Fine Arts. Kordali’s research centers on the interactions of language with architectural structures, digital technology and tradition, as well as on the diversity of possible ecosystems, both human and non-human, which could potentially occur as a result of these interactions. She is particularly interested in the spatial relations developing between bodies and their built environment. In her artistic practice, the latter function as a metaphor, helping her to tackle issues like identity construction, one’s mutual dependence with other people and the natural environment, as well as the precarious balances and fragility of these relations in our ever-changing social, psychological, emotional and political conditions. Her artistic practice combines sculpture, drawing, text and installation. She has participated in group exhibitions and residency programs. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
He studied performance (live art) at Brunel University in London and physical theatre at the London International School of Performing Arts. Based in Thessaloniki since 2013, he works in Greece and abroad. Looking for new ways of representation, body-based and across disciplines, his practice ranges from the production of immersive, live installations to the creation of small to large-scale and duration performances, often with the participation of ‘non-specialist’ participants and vulnerable communities (through a series of workshops and complex collective practices). His practice investigates the possibility of the artist as instigator and mediator towards the construction of a living social sculpture which can either condense shared meaning or destabilize and overturn dominant narratives and identities. He is a fellow of the Robert Bosch Stiftung charitable foundation. His work has been awarded by Ioannis S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and the 8th International Mime and Physical Theatre Festival and has been presented in solo or group shows in a number of institutions and venues, including: Venice Biennale of Architecture (Italy), Buffer Fringe Performance Arts Festival (Cyprus), Battersea Arts Centre (UK), Macedonian National Opera and Ballet (North Macedonia), the exhibition AS ONE, curated by NEON Organization for Culture and Development and Marina Abramovic Institute and presented in Benaki Museum (Athens), State Museum of Contemporary Art, Action Field Kodra, and Thessaloniki Goethe-Institut (Thessaloniki), among others. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Maria Michailidou (Athens, 1981) is a visual artist. She works with photography, video, found objects, and extracts from movies and songs, which she uses to create video installations, series of images, recitations, performative actions and spatial compositions. Her work has been presented at the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Victoria Square Project, Green Park café in Athens and the Athens Conservatory, among others. She is a member of a Denmark-based art group mainly developing site-specific installations in large spaces, for example the Kunsthal-ved siden af art space and the Museum of Ancient Art in Aarhus. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Stelios Papagrigoriou (1983) lives and works in Athens. He is a writer, and a visual and sound artist. His different skills and capacities are in constant conversation in his practice, as evidenced in his use of various media such as painting, sculpture, installations, literary text, sound, digital video, etc. His work tackles issues revolving mainly around the theme of the human form, as well as the deformations which the latter may suffer. From 2015 until today he has participated in musical performances in Europe, Israel and New York with the art group Hand & Leg, which he has co-founded. His paintings and sculptures have been featured on the covers of his albums released by the labels Slovenly, Fourth Dimension and Agios Anthropos, and his installations and costumes have been used for his performances in Greece and abroad. His work has been exhibited in Velvet Room (Athens, 2017); in the group exhibition Growing Confined in PS Communitism (Athens, 2021); and in the context of the solo show If My Body Had A House, prepared in collaboration with B. Markopoulou and presented in Kick hub, Athens (2021). His digital artworks are hosted on the online platform Homeostasis Lab. He has contributed stories for LUST magazine, while his novels and short stories have been published by Nefeli and Topos press. He regularly contributes articles in various online literary magazines. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Alexios Papazacharias was born in 1982 in Larissa, Greece, where he lives and works. From 2006 to 2016 he worked as a curator, collaborating with important institutions and organisations in Greece and abroad. From 2016 to 2019 he presented a series of his own works, consisting of constructions-objects. In the last two years, his interest has shifted towards painting. His works have been exhibited in Greece and abroad. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Anna Papathanasiou is a Greek-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. She is a founding member of the Greek rock band Puta Volcano. Anna has studied classical piano and music theory at the Athenaeum Maria Callas Conservatory. She graduated from the Department of Physical Education and Sports Sciences of the Democritus University of Thrace and holds a BA and an MFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts [ASFA]. In the past, she has presented her piece EAT in New York, as a resident artist at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center; performed the piece Empathetic Body at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the #SKG Bridges – Uprising Art and Culture Festival and the Kaunas Biennale; completed a residency at the National Theatre School of Canada (Montreal) with the support of LA SERRE – Arts Vivants; performed her piece Some Sort of Now in France, Spain and Andorra (commissioned by Ricardo Bofill) and her piece Christmas Tree at the exhibition Art Props|Kunst- Interventionen in Mannheim, Germany. Her work has been selected for the Digital Biennale; Palais de Paris (Tokyo, Japan) and the Athens Biennale (Greece). In addition, she was an artistic collaborator of Euripides Laskarides for the performance ELENIT which was presented at Onassis Stegi, and has exhibited in Salon du dessin Érotique de Paris (France).
Eleni received her academic education at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and École Supérieure d’Architecture de La Villette in Paris. She holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from Columbia University in New York where she received the Fullbright scholarship. Eleni’s vision is that of seamlessly flowing through interdisciplinary practices by focusing on strong concepts that blur
the boundaries between the artistic and the pragmatic, between form and abstraction, merging her strong background in architecture and art. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Eleni is the co-founder and Creative Director of Objects of Common Interest, a studio operating within the realm of art and design, as well as architecture, blending projects in scale from objects and installations to interactive immersive environments and interior spaces. Eleni along with her partner Leonidas Trampoukis are also founding partners of the sibling studio LOT Office for Architecture. Objects of Common Interest was formed with a focus on creating still life installations and experiential environments and objects, demonstrating a fixation with materiality, concept and tangible spatial experiences. OoCI aims to create projects that balance between the long-lasting and the ephemeral, projects in time and objects whose creative approach stems from an abstract realm enriched with layers of conceptual readings: moments of unfamiliar simplicity, sculptural and material self-expression, structural articulation. The work roots from an amalgamation of thinking and making between two diverse poles, Greece and New York, switching between the formal and the intuitive, embracing the handmade and the tactile, the experimental and the poetic.
Evangelia Spiliopoulou (b. 1981) holds an undergraduate degree from the Athens School of Fine Arts and an MA in Fine Art from the Metropolitan University of Manchester. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the Athens School of Fine Arts, with research focused on drawing. Her practice examines the replacement of the physical to the mechanical and observes the various forms of repetition supported by the unconscious. Through installations of sculpture, sound, technical voices, video and drawing she presents re-appropriations of stereotypes of gender, culture and history in the formation of collective identity. Her work has been exhibited in Athens (Museum of Contemporary Art), London (Drawing Room gallery), Milan (PeepHole gallery), Prague (DOX Centre for Contemporary Art), Rome (Ex-Bibli), Vienna (Kunstraum Am Schauplatz), Eindhoven (Van Abbemuseum library), Manchester (Castlefield Gallery, Bury Museum, Rochdale Touchstones Museum), and Antwerp (Lokaal 01 gallery). She has been nominated for the Drawing Room Bursary (UK, 2011 and 2015), shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2010 (UK), and awarded a distinction by the 2014 Celeste Art Prize committee. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Maro Fasouli studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ΑSFA, 2000–05). In 2009 she completed her postgraduate studies at the Department of Fine Arts of ASFA. She revisits the traditional craft of painting in terms of the practice itself, bringing to the fore connections amongst bodily practices, labour, and gender. She is a founding member of the art group Under Construction (2008), with which she has participated in exhibitions, residencies, and performances in Greece and in other countries. She has presented her work in two solo exhibitions, From the Elbow to the Wrist at the Athens Municipality Arts Centre presented by the Organization of Culture, Sports and Youth of the City of Athens and curated by Christoforos Marinos (2020); and Picnic in North Korea, at CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery (2017). In addition, she has participated in several group exhibitions, including: Patras International Festival, Old Municipal Baths, (Patras, 2009); Placement-Misplacement-Displacement, ReMAP KM3, AD Gallery (Athens, 2011); Architectural Object, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (Athens, 2013); Towards Tinos, Tinos Cultural Foundation (Tinos, 2013); Afresh, National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens, 2013); Face to Phase, Athens School of Fine Arts (Athens, 2017); The Folk, Angeliki Chatzimichali Museum of Folk Art and Tradition (Athens, 2019). She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Spyros Rennt lives and works between Athens and Berlin. His photographic work documents queer sexuality and the rave subculture through a personal lens. He has published two photographic books, Another Excess (2018) and Lust Surrender (2020). He has exhibited his work in group shows in Europe and the US, in spaces like the Schinkel Pavillon (Berlin, 2019) and the Schwules Museum (Berlin, 2021). His work has been featured in publications worldwide, such as Interview, i-D, Dazed, Sleek, Indie, Electronic Beats, and Kaltblut, among others. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Margarita Athanasiou is a multidisciplinary artist based in Athens, Greece. Her work is text-based and explores sidelined female histories, often combining research with autobiography. Big part of her practice revolves around artist publishing. She is the creator of 6 art zines, while Nouns, her first book of poetry, was published in 2018. Margarita is a Slade School of Fine Art graduate, co-founder of the Athens Art Book Fair, an Onassis AIR fellow, an active participant in various queer/feminist projects and a passionate meme artist. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Mirsini Artakianou (Lesvos, Greece, 1987) is a Greek-German artist working with diverse textures and materials, from clay to thread and from paper to metal, in her effort to present organic forms as vessels of meaning. Aspiring to integrate the concept of flow as a structural element enabling her works to oscillate between geometry and abstraction, she makes use of handicraft in her creative process. Mirsini is a graduate of the Department of Fine Arts and Sciences of Art, part of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina, Greece (2006-2012), and holds a postgraduate degree from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany (2014-2016). She has received several grants for artist residencies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as a three-month funded stay in Turkey as part of a scholarship from the Goethe-Institut. In 2020, she received the Denkzeit scholarship from the Cultural Foundation of the State of Saxony. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021). She has participated in many group exhibitions in Greece, Germany and other European countries.
Jeph Vanger (b.1989 in Athens) is a sound artist and composer working between Athens and London. The interaction between sound, space, and the body is an important part of his artistic practice. He has worked in the fields of dance, theatre, and art installation and has received the Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) Digital Music and Sound Arts Breakthrough Award during his studies at the University of Brighton in 2017. He is also one of the Composers-in-Residence for 2021-22 at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden, supported by HelpMusiciansUK. His personal projects and collaborations have been exhibited and performed in institutions, theatres and organisations in China, the UK, France and Greece, including: Today Art Museum in Beijing, Sadler’s Wells, Fort Process festival (UK), Onassis Cultural Centre, Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall, and ICI – centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier (France). His works often combine multi-channel sound systems, modular synthesizers and handmade sound sculptures, focusing on the physicality of sound in space as a moving and raw entity. He has collaborated with several choreographers and artists from Athens and abroad, including: Anna Herrmann, Tribe//, Coda Dance, GesamtAtelier, George Poulios, Anastasia Valsamaki, Euripides Laskaridis, Chara Kotsali, Candy Karra, Michalis Theofanous, Georgia Tegou, Paul Blackman, and Christina Gouzeli, amongst others. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Evangelia Vatsaki was born in 1987 on the island of Rhodes, where she currently lives and works. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts, while one semester of her studies was completed at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts. In addition, she has attended an animation workshop in Istanbul, Turkey. From 2017 to 2019 she co-curated the festival Nature of Art at the park of Rodini, in Rhodes, where she also kept the Yellow Diver art studio. She uses a wide range of media (painting, installation, performance, video and digital art) and she runs art workshops as part of her practice. Through her work, she explores and narrates the journey of her consciousness in the world. She has participated in various group exhibitions, and held a solo exhibition at the shelter perched at the top of Mountain Akramitis (2020), which included trekking and camping trips from which she takes inspiration and creates art and travelogues. In 2021, a retrospective exhibition of her 11-year drawing production was held at the Art Park of Rhodes. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Olga Vlassi (b.1991) is an Athens-based artist. She has studied sculpture and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, completing part of her studies at the École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris on an Erasmus scholarship (2019). She holds a degree in Archaeology & History of Art (2015, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens). Her interests lie in the junction where space, memory and the performative body meet, and in the discourses which are built around them. She experiments with materials such as clay, plaster, glass, marble and concrete. Her studies in archaeology and particularly prehistory were an important source of influence on her practice, critically bringing forward the processes of excavating, archiving and research in the form and content of the work. She has presented her work in group exhibitions held at the Italian Embassy in Athens, the American College of Greece and the city of Elefsina (Eleusis 2023 European Capital of Culture). She has also worked in the theatre, creating and selecting stage objects for Euripides Laskarides’ performances ELENIT and Euripides by Euripides. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).