Born in 1990 in Thessaloniki, Greece. Graduated with distinction from the School of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in 2014. In 2019 he obtained the Postgraduate Studies Diploma Audiovisual Arts in the Digital Age from the Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University, specialising on interactive installations and new media in art. He has created the permanent public art work A propos of the burned piano at the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 2015) and has presented his work in five solo exhibitions: Mémoire Courte (French Institute of Thessaloniki, 2020); Bliss Machines (Old Fortress, Corfu, 2019); Éducation forcée (French Institute of Thessaloniki, 2017); Object’s Origin Rejected (Cultural Centre of Alimos Municipality, Athens, 2017); and Mother Tongue (Gallery Choros 18, Thessaloniki, 2014). In addition, he has participated in more than 50 group shows. In 2017 he represented Greece at the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean Mediterranea 18 ‘Home’, held at the National Gallery of Tirana, Albania. Since 2016, he is co-curating the site-specific project Inappropriate course. He has taught courses and semimars at universities . In 2020 he started a PhD at the Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University, on the subject of political art in the digital era.
Madlen Anipsitaki (Athens, 1987) is an architect and urban scenographer. With her in-situ installations in public spaces, she seeks to break into the everyday-life, generating the collective appropriation both of her artworks and of their environment.
After graduating from the School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, in 2009, she obtained a Master’s degree in bioclimatic architecture from the Technical University of Madrid (2010). She then went on to study architecture at the National School of Architecture Paris-Malaquais, part of the Paris Fine Arts School, from where she graduated in 2015.
In 2012, she was awarded 2nd prize at the Innovation and Technology competition organised by the National Bank of Greece, with her project Aesthetic improvement of the photovoltaic panels with traditional patterns and colors.
In 2018, after two years of working as an architect, she co-founded the MASI Collective with sociologist Simon Riedler and together they developed the urban scenography project A thread network in the urban fabric. On the occasion of this project, Madlen Anipsitaki was invited to 9 residencies in 7 different Latin American countries, where she exhibited her artworks in the period 2018-2019. In 2019-2020, her work was displayed in Paris (Voltaire exhibition space, international artist residency foundation Cité Internationale des Arts). Recently, the MASI Collective was selected by the Ateliers Médicis team, to give a creation-transmission workshop while in residency on Clichy-Sous-Bois. Future plans include taking the Α thread network in the urban fabric project to Athens.
Ileana Arnaoutou was born in Athens in 1994. Ιn 2017, she graduated from the Slade School of Fine Arts with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art, and in 2018 from University College London with an MA in Art History, specializing in sexuality, trauma and psychoanalysis. Since then, Ileana has been living and working in Athens, mainly focusing on painting, drawing and sculpture, through which media she asks questions around notions of embodiment and the inability of the subject to remain intact. In her practice, she tackles issues that relate to Judith Butler’s notion of ‘being undone by each other’ – undone by touch, grief or desire; an embodied ‘self-encounter’ and psychosomatic experience that she explores through the intimacy and immediacy of working with paint and clay. Ileana is a co-founder in Athens Open Studio, an artist-run space in Athens focusing on practice-led inquiry and education. She has participated in various group shows in Athens, such as Back to Athens 7, Serving off Matter and Exposition 1, and has received scholarships from the Schilizzi Foundation and University College London.
Eirini Vlavianou was born in Athens, Greece in 1994. She is a graduate student of the Visual Arts department of Deree, The American College of Greece, and an active member of Autonomous Academy, an initiative by Joulia Strauss aiming to creatively redefine the notions of education and self-education. She has participated in symposia in the public programme of documenta 14 and in Kyiv Biennial 2017.
Her work focuses mainly on new digital art mediums, installation and sculptural pieces. Her practice develops around trauma (personal, political or social) and all the things that are left behind as scars, wounds or footnotes to memories. She is interested in the reality within which all those fragments coexist and inhabit, giving the impression of a space devoid of forces or movement, where everything becomes fluid and ephemeral.
Konstantinos Giotis (b.1988) lives and works in Athens. He is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (Master of Fine Arts Painting, 2015) and of the Department of Fine Arts and Art Sciences, University of Ioannina (BA Fine Art, 2013), while in the period 2010-2011 he studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Compultense University of Madrid, as part of the Erasmus student exchange programme. In his practice, desires, fantasies or autobiographical deviations function as points of departure from which to explore ideological constructions, the limits of representation and painting tropes as building blocks for the construction of a contemporary imaginary. He has presented his work in a number of exhibitions, including: Cra(u)sh. Or how you made me kiss the pavement, Grace (Athens); But are we the only dreamed ones?, Daily Lazy Projects (Athens); Black Paintings, Charlie Smith (London); Nothing, TinT Gallery (Thessaloniki) andWhatWeWant, Action Field Kodra, (Thessaloniki). Furthermore, his work is exhibited at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki).
Yorgos Goussis (1986) was born in Athens and works as a comic book creator and short film director. In 2012 he published the collection of short stories Innocent Times (ΚΨΜ publications), while in 2016 he created a comic book adaptation of the Greek renaissance epic poem Erotokritos by Vitsentzos Kornaros (script: Dimosthenis Papamarkos and Yannis Rangos, Polaris publications), for which he won five Greek Comics Awards. Between 2017 and 2019, he acted as editor-in-chief for the Greek comics magazine Blue Comet. In 2019, he was commissioned by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival to produce, together with Panayiotis Pantazis and Georgia Zachari, the 180-page-long comic book Festival, an anniversary edition to mark the 60 years since the launch of the festival.
In 2018 he was the production designer of the Greek short film Iskioma (Faliro House Productions). In 2019 he debuted as a director with the documentary The arm wrestler, which was awarded second place in the Best Short Film category during the 25th Athens International Film Festival, and was named Best Short Documentary for 2020 by the Hellenic Film Academy.
I was born in Budapest where I spent half τηε summers of my life. I studied Digital Arts (MFA) at the Athens School of Fine Arts and Informatics at the Athens University of Applied Sciences. I am an alumnus of the Talents Sarajevo programme. I work as a screenwriter, film editor and designer in Athens. I am also a prize-winning film director.
Léllé Demertzi (b.1993) graduated from the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens in 2017. She also studied acting at the Athens Conservatory Drama School. She completed the MA Raumstrategien (Spatial Strategies) at the art school Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee in July 2019. In September 2020, she completed a 12-month internship at the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. She has presented her work (performance, video, installation, photomontage) in solo and group exhibitions in Athens, Berlin, Zurich and Luzern, Salzburg, Accra and New York. She is part of the artist duo Reservoir Peacocks, advocating for female empowerment. Recurring matters in her artistic research are identity, displacement and the need for belongingness, the ‘self’ and ‘the other’, the in-between spaces, language and silence, memory, presence and absence, as well as scars and the stars.
Giorgos Iliopoulos was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece. He is a graduate of the School of Film, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. After securing a scholarship from the British Film Institute, he continued his studies at the Scotland Screen Academy, where he completed an M.F.A. in Advanced Film Practice and was awarded the medal of excellence in Arts from the University of Napier. During his studies he worked as a cinematographer for the short documentary Fishcakes and Cocaine, directed by fellow student Alex Nevill. The short film Chameleons was his thesis film. He has worked extensively as a director and cinematographer in the TV series VICE Specials, as well as in docuseries for ERT. Additionally, he works as an Athens-based freelance director and cinematographer Athens. In November 2019, his short film Arizones secured funding from the Greek Film Centre and is scheduled to start shooting in March 2021. Currently he works on the development of his debut feature length documentary, Exile(s).
Konstantinos Doumpenidis (b. 1984, Xanthi, Greece) holds a Master’s in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts. His practice is multidisciplinary, stretching between photography, video art, publications and social experimentation. His work has been presented, among others, in the following group exhibitions: Government of Things, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (2019); L’ Autre Europe Avec Jean, in the context of the residency programme Emergency at Vevey, Switzerland (2018); Island, MEME Athens (2017); Medphoto Photography Festival (2017); 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015); PhotoBiennale Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (2014); By necessity, Athens Photo Festival (2013).
Foivos Dousos completed his PhD on narcissism in new media cultures in 2019. In his creative practice as part of the artistic duo FYTA, he has performed in Athens, Geneva, Berlin and London, while in 2017 he worked as a curator for the Athens Biennale. In 2020, FYTA was commissioned by the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera to present a queer adaptation of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.
Kostis Theodosopoulos studied at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. He has held positions coordinating masterclasses and open discussions at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival while, since 2010, he has been serving as program coordinator for the Athens International Film Festival and the Athens Open Air Film Festival, in parallel with pursuing further studies in the fields of cinema and directing. His debut short film, Rouge, had its International premiere during the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020 and its North American premiere in Palm Springs ShortFest 2020. In addition, Rouge won 3 prizes (Best Newcomer Director, Best Screenplay, Best Make-Up) at the Drama International Short Film Festival, where it was selected for the National Competition section.
Υannis Karydas was born and lives in Thessaloniki. He is a graduate of the School of Film, Faculty of Fine Arts, of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Born in Greece in 1986, he received his MFA in Film Directing from the School of Film of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has lived extensively in different cities and countries, teaching Film & Media and working on his short and feature film projects. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Sarajevo Talents, First Films First and Meet the Future. His first short drama King Kong (Marni Films) received its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014 and was subsequently screened at Queer Lisboa, Split, Sguardi Altrove, Pink Screens and Queersicht festivals. Baby (Homemade Films), his feature film debut, after winning the YapimLab award during the Pack & Pitch challenge of the Sarajevo Talents programme, is currently being developed with the support of the Greek Film Center . National road of a broken heart (Homemade Films), his second short film, will be produced by autumn 2020.
Petros Efstathiadis was born in 1980 in Liparo, Pella. He studied at the Farnham University of Creative Arts and currently lives and works in Greece. In 2019 he presented his work at Kunst Haus Wien museum in Vienna. In 2018 he presented photos, videos and an on-site construction during the exhibition The Presence of Absence or the Theory of Destruction at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Center (NiMAC) in Cyprus, a series of works previously exhibited at the Izolyatsia cultural platform in Kiev, Ukraine (2016). In 2018 he presented his work in the following spaces: CAN Christina Αndroulidaki Gallery; Galerie Clémentine De La Feronnière, France; Getxophoto, Spain; and Casa Bianca, Photobiennale Thessaloniki. He has also shown his work in the following venues and events: Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University (New York, 2017); Foto Forum Galerie (Bolzano, Italy, 2017); The Equilibrists exhibition at the Benaki Museum, curated by the New Museum of New York (Athens, 2016); the Serlachius Museum, Finland (2018); at the Circulations Photographic Festival (Paris, 2015); at the Athens Photo Festival (2008); Xippas Gallery (2009); and Cyprus House of Cyprus (Athens, 2014). He was a visiting lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts, at the Centre d‘enseignementprofessionnel in Switzerland and at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp . His monograph, entitled Liparo: The Story of a Burning Peach, was published by Xavier Barral editions. In 2018 he was awarded the Prix HSBC, while in 2013 he won the grand prize at the International Fashion and Photography Festival in Hyères, France.
Vasiliki Lazaridou is a queer visual artist and filmmaker born in 1989 and raised in Thessaloniki. They studied Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean and Theory οf Cinema at Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III. Lazaridou have often produced the work of their fellow artists and acted as assistant director for their projects, and have worked as creative director, writer and curator. They hold a Master’s degree in Communication & Media Rhetoric from the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and are currently working on a genre short film.
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.
Born in Athens, he studied architecture at the National Technological University of Athens and filmmaking at London Film School. In 2011 he was named Best Newcomer Director at the Drama International Short Film Festival with his film If you have no place to cry. His short films have screened in more than 100 international festivals including those of Telluride, Locarno and Annecy. Aristotelis now works as director for films and advertisement in Greece and the UK while preparing his first feature film.
Christos Nikou was born in Athens in 1984.
His short film KM screened in over 40 international film festivals, including those of Rotterdam, Stockholm, Palm Springs, Sydney, Tallinn Black Nights, Interfilm Berlin, while it was named Best Short Film at Motovun Film Festival in Croatia.
For the past ten years, he has worked as assistant director on many feature films including Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos and Before Midnight by Richard Linklater.
The title of his first feature film is Apples.
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.