Ellie Antoniou (b. 1995, Birmingham, UK) is an artist based between London and Athens. Interested in how we navigate the physical and virtual layers of reality, she explores our irreducibly complex relation to time through the lens of technology. Antoniou weaves a fluid language across digital and physical means of making, employing an array of processes: from surface conditioning techniques on mild steel plates, to CGI and virtual environments. She holds an MA Degree in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (2018-2020) and a BA in Fine Art & History of Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2014-2017). She is the recipient of a NEON Postgraduate Scholarship (2018-2019) and a member of the Athens-based ERGO Collective, a creative platform and project space founded on the premise of collaboration. Recent exhibitions include: Mont Analogue, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, France (2021); AORA:IV, AORA Space online platform (2021); and her solo _overlapping moments of a slightly present, Saigon gallery, Athens (2021). Antoniou has been selected to participate in Palazzo Monti’s residency program for 2023 and has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Athanasios Kanakis (b. 1983, Athens) lives and works in Paris. He is a graduate of the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics of the School of Engineering, University of Patras and holds postgraduate degrees from the University of the Arts Bremen (HfK, 2010, in digital media) and from Berlin University of the Arts (UdK 2013). He has been selected to participate in a number of international residency programs, among others: AiR – Artist in Residence Niederoesterreich in Krems, Austria (2019/2020); AiR Est-Nord-Est, Residence d’Artistes Saint-Jean-Port-Joli in Québec, Canada (2015); AiR DordtYart Center for Contemporary Art in Dordrecht, the Netherlands (2014). He has also been a fellow of the Pépinières Εuropéennes pour Jeunes Αrtistes foundation (2015). In November 2020, he joined the artist-run space W-Atelier in Paris. In his artistic vocabulary, he uses a variety of media such as installations, sculptures, collages, photography and digital media. Taking space as his starting point, he explores notions of place and memory as well as the relationship between the familiar and the uncanny and identifies traces of lived experiences which urge us to redefine our relationship with our surroundings. He has exhibited his work in galleries and institutions such as iMAL Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology in Brussels, DordtYart Center for Contemporary Art in Dordrecht, Grace artist-run space in Athens, OpenBach and 6B galleries in Paris, and at Wall-Saal gallery, housed at the central library of Bremen. His installation State of Emergency has been selected to participate in 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Marios Stamatis (born in Greece) lives and works in Athens. His practice includes sculpture, performance, video, sound and text. He holds an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London and has been awarded the StartPoint Prize for graduates of European art academies. He has participated in the Ghost Camp artist residency program in Switzerland and was shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Prize in 2017 and 2018. He has presented his work in various venues internationally, including the galleries Zabludowicz Collection, Gossamer Fog, Arebyte, Assembly Point and Beaconsfield in London; Outsight gallery (South Korea); Fotopub (Slovenia); CAN gallery (Athens); Geneva Contemporary Art Center; as well as in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, as part of the project Peckham Experiment: A center for self-organization. His practice focuses on the emotional impact of AI applications on our perception of what is natural or real, and on how these applications may interact with nature. Through a de-centred physical and neural fluidity in the form of expression, his work simulates and explores the increasing influence of new forms of intelligence on the human psyche, intellect and ultimately the body, and how by embracing the interconnections between organic and non-organic life, affect becomes a vehicle for rethinking these transformative co-existences. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Nikos Topalidis (b. 1985) is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts living and working in Athens. In his practice, he fashions imaginary landscapes out of densely worked pencil drawings and relief fragments. His work has been exhibited in a number of group exhibitions, among others: Thalassa – The sea in Greek art from antiquity until today (Shanghai Museum, 2022), Rooms 2016 (St George Lycabettus Hotel, Athens), and Kodra Fresh (Action field Kodra, Thessaloniki, 2011). In 2014, he attended the Time and Tide workshop at the city of Escalles in France, in collaboration the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. He has been awarded first prize at the Biennale of Fine Arts Students in Greece by the B. & M. Theocharakis foundation (2014) and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by Artworks 2022.
Irini Bachlitzanaki (b. 1984, Athens) studied history of art at UCL, University of London and fine art at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts and most recently the Royal Academy Schools in London, graduating in 2021. Inspired by material culture and the biographies of objects, in her practice, which is primarily sculptural, she combines a range of material processes to interrogate the relationship of sculpture to other forms of representation but also the relationship of making works of art to different forms of production, artefacts and commodities. Solo exhibitions include: just us on a different day and Emergent Qualities at Elika Gallery, Athens; and The Combination Show at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Her work has also been displayed in several group exhibitions in Athens, London and elsewhere in galleries, museums and independent art spaces. Recently awarded scholarships and grants include: the Arts Council England DYCP grant (2022), the Jerwood Arts 1:1 grant (2021), the André Dunoyer de Segonzac Hon RA Prize from Royal Academy Schools (2021), the Wolfson College graduate prize (2021), the Gilbert Bayes Award (2020) and the NEON scholarship for postgraduate studies (2017-2020). She lives and works between Athens and London. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Sofia Stevi is an artist living and working in Athens. She studied graphic design at Vakalo School of Art and Design and visual communication at Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London. Her paintings are interpretations of materiality through fluid narratives. Time and space are conflating in a universe where dream is a basic construct of everyday experience, bodies are in flux and chance acquires a permanent substance. She has presented her work internationally in the context of solo exhibitions (Onassis Stegi in Athens; ΒALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, United Kingdom; Le Quai, Societa Della Appi, Monaco; Τhe Breeder Gallery, Greece; Galeria Pelaires, Spain; ALMA ZEVI gallery, Italy; and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, United Kingdom) and group shows held in museums, galleries and project spaces in Greece and abroad. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Athina Koubarouli is a graduate of the Department of Restoration and Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, University of West Attica, and holds an MSc in Post-industrial Design from the University of Thessaly. In 2019, she exhibited her work at the art organization BioArt Laboratories in Eindhoven with the support of an Erasmus+ scholarship. Since 2013, she has been active in an artist-run studio in central Athens focusing on the production of visual and utilitarian objects, custom works and theater props. Moreover, in recent years she has also been working in excavation projects and collaborating with museums and cultural spaces as a conservator of antiquities and works of art. Her artistic practice is fueled by her professional activities as well as her involvement with beekeeping, both of which bring her into direct contact with the natural environment and with material culture. Through multidimensional research on the fields of conservation, archaeological research and methodology, biology, philosophy, post-industrial and speculative design, she attempts to produce artistic depictions of natural processes and of the complex network of mutual dependencies connecting these processes to humans. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Katerina Sarra was born in Athens in 1982, where she lives and works. She began her studies at the sculpture sector of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and then switched to the painting sector, graduating with honours. In December 2017, her degree project featured in a documentary series about art students in Greece produced by TV channel of the Hellenic Parliament, in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Technology and Communications of the University of the Aegean. In 2020, she completed a Master of Fine Arts at ASFA. Her visual practice is principally concerned with the process of painting, interrogating its starting point, its evolution as well as its destination. Her work sets in motion a continuous process of transforming an original writing on the canvas into images essentially reflecting back to themselves. The goal is to present a whole by activating a series of dynamic fields conversing with each other within the space defined by the frame, with each field reflecting a plausible situation. The manner of conducting this conversation is a key element of her explorations as a painter. She has participated in group exhibitions and been awarded several prizes. In 2021, she held her first solo exhibition at a.antonopoulou.art gallery in Athens. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Kostis Damoulakis is an artist born and based in Athens. He holds a degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His active involvement with graffiti and tattoo art for over two decades has shaped and determined the references and content of his works. With painting as his main medium, he composes contemporary pieces using symbols retrieved from different movements, civilizations and historical periods. He studies everyday urban events and develops a poetic of the common and the insignificant taking the human figure as his point of departure. His works are included in private collections in Greece and abroad, while his murals can be found in cities around the world. He has presented his work in solo exhibitions held at P.E.T. Projects, Athens; Neo Cosmos/Laboratory for the Urban Commons, Athens; Montana Gallery Barcelona, Spain; and Lola Nikolaou Gallery, Thessaloniki. He has also taken part in group exhibitions held in a number of museums and arts venues (Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Lola Nikolaou Gallery, Athens; Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center, Athens; a.antonopoulou.art gallery; and the Athens School of Fine Arts, among others) and has participated in Art-Thessaloniki International Art Fair (2018). He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Evangelia Niarchou was born in 1986 in Athens. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts (2008-2013) and of the Marble Sculpture Art School of Panormos in Tinos (2005-2008). She has completed an internship in scenography at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival and has completed part of her studies as an Erasmus student at the School of Fine Arts (FBAUP), University of Porto. She has participated in exhibitions, festivals, programs and workshops in Greece and abroad and has collaborated with curators, visual artists, scenographers, choreographers, architects, archaeologists and writers in a number of exhibitions, workshops, performances, illustrations and restoration works. In 2017, she received a grant from the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture to participate in the art residency program of the creation center Les Annexes du Château de Bourglinster, in collaboration with the visual artist M. Antonopoulou. In 2019, she was selected for the artist residency of the Aveyron Culture program (Rodez, France) as an artistic duo with visual artist Jeremy Lacombe. In 2021, she developed an artistic research project on contemporary art practices engaging with the unexplored folk culture of Xiromero in Aetolia-Akarnania, under a grant awarded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. In recent years, she has been living and working on the Greek island of Tinos. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Phaidonas Gialis (1986, Athens) studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and holds a postgraduate degree from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (MFA). The technique of collage/assemblage is central to his practice, as it serves as the starting point for developing his ideas and works. He employs disparate elements on different levels in order to create new narratives and ways of telling stories. He has presented his works in venues in Greece and abroad, such as Daily Lazy and Allouche Benias galleries in Athens, Romas dārzs (Latvia), and Kunstwerk Cologne in Germany. Ηe has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Ismini Gatou lives and works in Athens. Her practice lies at the intersection between art and research, addressing issues of spatiality and inhabitation as seen through the digital condition. In her work, she adopts theoretical/methodological “tools” from sound and media studies, anthropology of space and the senses, as well as multimodal and sensory ethnography. She experiments with various materials, media and forms: field/voice recordings, sound composition, interactive audio-mapping and sound-based locative media. Currently, she is completing her PhD in Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean with the support of the State Scholarship Foundation in Greece. She holds a MSc in Cultural Informatics also from the University of the Aegean, completed under a Leventis Foundation scholarship; a MA from the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and a BA in Communication and Media from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has participated with solo/group works in several exhibitions and festivals in Greece and abroad, including: Athens Digital Art Festival (2015),Urban Emptiness Project | NeMe Arts Centre (Limassol, 2017), Ethnokino Film Festival (Bern, 2019), Data-stories Confestival (Volos, 2019), Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (Sharjah, 2020), and Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (2021). She has collaborated with cultural organizations and participated in artistic projects held internationally. Some examples: Art Athina, Onassis Cultural Centre, MUSA Cultural Center (Göttingen, Germany), Hellenic Children’s Museum, Orasi Art organization (Bologna, Italy), and the program Actors of Urban Change ran by MitOst organization in collaboration with the Robert Bosch Foundation. Between 2017 and 2019, she was a member of NACUSSO (Natural & Cultural Soundscape and Storytelling Organisation). She has been selected to participate in Robert Bosch Foundation’s START program (2015) and in the 6th NEON Curatorial Exchange (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2017). She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Yiannis Loukos is a sound artist based in Berlin. As a composer, pianist, and a student at the National Technical University of Athens, he works with sound production in any medium with a focus on visual arts and video. Since 2000, he has been working in the field of contemporary art, music and film through international collaborations and individual research. His work focuses on the relationship between noise and music in different social contexts and is expressed through installations. In 2021, he was a resident at ZK/U center in Berlin (supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation) where he developed the project Drone Symphony subsequently presented at Hosek Contemporary gallery in Berlin. In 2022, in collaboration with the artist-performer, he presented the work An educational Album at Het Hem culture center in Amsterdam with the support of the Mondriaan Fund. In September 2021, he received the sound award at the Drama Short Film Festival for the film Last Visit by Spiros Alidakis. His compositions have been presented across Europe, including at the 47th Darmstädter Ferienkurse in Germany (2014); the 10th Contemporary Music Conference at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall in Greece (2019); and the impuls . 12th International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, in Graz, Austria (2020). He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Marina Velisioti was born in Thessaloniki and is based in Athens. She studied at the School of Visual and Applied Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During her university studies she attended courses and seminars in scenography. She works with video art applications and music psychology, psychoacoustics and documentary. She also attended courses in technical analogue and digital photo printing, engraving and sculpture. Lately, she has been producing a series of digitally processed collages and tapestries developing narratives inspired by deserted or forgotten landscapes and primordial figures. She is the founder and editor of the art zine Bebabebo. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Panayotis Lianos is an artist, architect and tattooist based in Athens. He is a graduate of the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens (ΝTUA), holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and is currently studying towards a PhD in architecture at NTUA. His artistic research focuses on methods of collective artistic production capable of creating cracks within institutional frameworks. In his practice, he employs a broad range of media —from installations and performance to digital interdisciplinary fetishes, through which he composes a vocabulary situated somewhere between bits and gestures, blood and data. His work has been presented in various exhibitions and art spaces, among others: the Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Hong Kong; State of Concept, Athens; Eight, Athens; Neo Cosmos, Athens; P.E.T. Projects, Athens; Ammophila, Elafonisos; Michalis Cacoyannis Foundation, Athens; and Union Pacific, London. He is a member of the Ofrah Fergal Kasei practice, the Laboratory for the Urban Commons, and the fluid artistic collaboration method brackets[]. Through this series of symbioses, a series of co-authored works, interventions and publications have been produced; some are included in private and public collections, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art, while others have been exhibited in self-managed and public spaces. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou (Bunny) is a visual artist based between Athens and Los Angeles. They hold a BA in sculpture from the Athens School of Fine Arts and are currently completing an MFA in media arts at the University of California (UCLA) under a Fulbright scholarship. In their interdisciplinary methodology, the social component is paramount, while fluffiness and touch is being used as a means to foster intimacy and interaction. It is about how softness can lead us to transform our subjectivities and communities or how melancholy and failure can shape a new understanding of the political. In 2018 they created Fluffy Library, a hybrid platform of togetherness for artists, book lovers, educators, activists, children and youth, families of all kinds and people from the LGBTQIA+ community, which was hosted for a year by ATOPOS cvc with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development. Their work has been showcased internationally in museums, institutes and exhibition spaces, including: Arnolfini Center of Contemporary Arts in Bristol (solo show); the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; Fresh A.I.R. residency in Berlin; theaters Sophienshaele and Hebbel Am Ufer (HAU), also in Berlin; Onassis Stegi in Athens; as well as the art spaces Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Austria, and The Breeder Gallery in Athens. They have collaborated with such artists as Annea Lockwood, Annie Sprinkle, Brooke Candy, and Willem Pope L. They have been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Dimitris Kechris is a photographer and curator based in Athens. He studied Physics at the University of Athens and Digital Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA). In his practice, he looks for mnemic traces that underlie the formal historical narratives of modern European cities. He focuses on the relationship between technical images and the discourses contextualising them and explores the concept of the archive perceived as a reconstruction of the past in service of a promise for the future. His photographic work has been exhibited at the Benaki Museum, the Byzantine Museum, the Greek Film Archive, the Athens Municipality Arts Center, the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, the Athens University History Museum and Galeria Hexagono in Barcelona. He is the co-founder of ALDEBARAN, a platform for the theory of photography, and one of the curators of MedPhoto Festival. His writings on photography and cinema have appeared in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals and featured in the national press. He is a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.
Katerina Chatzikosti (born in 1996) is a visual artist living between London and Athens. She graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in 2021 and is currently a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. Using highly complex compositions whose stimuli she draws from trivial, everyday bodies of events, her work is centered on the construction of clusters —allegorical, confused worlds, which, in their immediacy, generate the prospect of associative malleability, while a certain contrived logic resonates through their architecture. She is interested in the written word as an imprint pregnant with visual implications, architectural patterns and threads of thought which lose their way, become dissolved and eventually subverted. She explores textures of materiality and sound, temperature and light and uses the written word as a starting point to compose a sense of time and space expanding on many layers. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Eirini Tiniakou (1993, Athens) is an artist based in Helsinki producing work in Greece (with a focus on Lesvos) and Vienna. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2018) and a Master of Arts from the Department of Art and Science, University of Applied Arts Vienna (2021). Her practice is grounded in field research, involving a mix of documentative, participatory and imaginative approaches. Her work is primarily concerned with themes of rural life and folklore and seeks to redefine our connection with the land and the self, often blending photography, textiles, objects and text. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions, among others: Meet the Universe, with the support of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2019); Chambre d’Ami·xes (Laurenz, Vienna, 2021); and Boxels, presented as part of the Biennale Sessions program of the Venice Biennale, 2019. Her work is represented by Kunst ab Hinterhof gallery (Parallel Vienna, 2019). She was selected for the Island Connect, a residency program funded by Creative Europe, 2020; as well as for Hermitage Sykaminea residency in Lesvos, in the framework of which she co-curated Hermitage Sykaminea Gathering (Athens, 2022) with the support of Goethe Institute and the Onassis Air residency program. Her work has received the support of the Finnish Institute of Athens and Austria’s Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture. She has been awarded by ARTWORKS (2022) and is a Fellow of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Support Program.
Anna Housiada was born in Athens. Her work is process-based and takes the form of texts, installations and participatory events aimed at triggering historical, critical and political dialogue. She likes to view communities as ecosystems and explore the dynamics of the relationships emerging within them. Using methodological tools rooted in interdependence and the collective production of knowledge, her practice tackles questions of identity and the sense of belonging in a context of cultural multiplicity. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Art (2017) and holds a postgraduate degree from Sint-Lucas University of Antwerp (2020) Advanced Masters of Research in Art within Social-Political Context. For the last two years, she has been working at the intersection between art, pedagogy and activism, driven by a desire to help strengthen communal relations, challenge hegemonic narratives and empower individual and communities to affirm the right over their own stories. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).