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).
Born in 1990, Fokion is a Director/ Designer from Athens, Greece. As an animation filmmaker he is interested in telling playful and bold stories that focus on visual wit and emotional honesty. Placing a particular emphasis on colour and form, he seeks to combine practical and digital techniques to create unique emerging visuals. Heatwave, his MA graduation film produced while studying at the National Film and Television School, has received prizes in multiple prestigious film festivals such as the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Cinekid, the Athens International Film Festival, AnimaSyros and many others. In addition, Heatwave has been officially selected for more than 70 film festivals around the globe, including Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Anima Mundi, Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, the London Short Film Festival and the London International Animation Festival , while it was shortlisted for the Student BAFTA in Los Angeles. Recently, it was named Best Student Short film by the Royal Television Society.
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.
Manos Papadakis was born and raised in Heraklion of Crete. He studied Business Administration at the University of Macedonia and Film and Television Direction at the Lykourgos Stavrakos School in Athens where he still lives and works. He started as a producer of short films (Sunday, Possibly Strangers, -1) and then turned towards scriptwriting (-1, Hem). His first directorial work (“The meaning of August”, 26΄) awaits its international premiere while he won an honorary distinction of sound (43rd Drama Festival) and best male performance (43rd Drama International Short Film Festival, Athens International Film Festival 2020).
He tries to release as many of the stories living in his head in order to prevent it from exploding. So far, he has been fairly successful. He has always been interested in the problematic of violence and the various forms it can assume. Three years after the birth of his son, he is more and more interested in the meaning we ascribe to the term ‘family’. His stories are leaning increasingly more in that direction.
Born in London and raised in Athens, Kyveli Short graduated from King’s College London in 2014. From 2015 to 2018, she worked at Anemon Productions in Athens, as the lead production manager on the documentary Dolphin Man (2017), directed by Lefteris Charitos, which was the recipient of two Hellenic Film Academy Awards. As a freelancer, she is the Associate Producer of Thanasis Neofotistos’ short fiction film Patision Avenue (Venice 2018), as well as Thelyia Petraki’s hybrid short film Bella (Visions du Réel 2020). She is currently collaborating with Maria Drandaki (Homemade Films) on the development of Konstantina Kotzamani’s debut feature film, Titanic Ocean. Kyveli is also co-director of the San Francisco Greek Film Festival, the longest-running Greek film festival in the United States.
Sofia Georgovassili is an awarded actress and director based in Athens, Greece. Her short film Preparation, which she directed and wrote the script for, had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2017 and travelled to numerous festivals all around the world. It also won her the award of Best Newcomer Director at Drama International Short Film Festival 2017 and received a special jury mention at the Athens International Film Festival. She is currently developing her first feature film under the title Mignon, with which she participated in the Torino ScriptLab 2018. The film also won an ARTEKino International Prize at the CineLink section of the Sarajevo International Film Festival and is supported by a CINEREACH development grant. Her film Memoir of a veering storm will premiere at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale (2022).
Born in Athens (1991), Angelos Papadopoulos is a dance artist and a director who steers purposely clear off the camera. He is a graduate of the Athens University of Economics and Business (an economist, not an accountant) and of the National School of Dance (KSOT) in Athens.
Ιn his work, Angelos is particularly interested in the notion of identity, especially his own. He studies his Ego from a psychoanalytic and transcendental vantage point and uses ART to conduct auto-psychoanalysis. He invites his friends and relatives but also complete strangers to rehearsals and shootings and together they study —a word he loves and hates at the same time— the idea of time and commercial value (he is a fervent admirer of the human body, words and money, um, the people). He is constantly performing, dancing, choreographing and directing, especially in the context of house parties. He has dreams of winning a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival and believes in the hands-on approach encapsulated in Ernesto Che Guevara’s quip: realism means pursuing the impossible.
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.
Christos Xyrafakis was born in Agrinio in 1989. He is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) in Athens and of the Department of Mathematics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After gaining a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation for the period 2014-2015, he completed a postgraduate degree at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) and attended the educational programme Ex-In where, under the guidance of David Zambrano, he was taught the flying low and passing through techniques. Presently, he is part of the main cast for the show The Thread, choreographed by Russell Maliphant, while in the past he has collaborated with Jukstapoz, Claudio Bernardo, Konstantinos Rigos,the Hellenic Dance Company, Olatz de Andres and other dance practitioners. In 2017, he was part of the main cast for Alcestes, National Theatre of Greece production directed by Katerina Evangelatos. He has served as assistant choreographer to Jukstapoz, Roberto Olivan and Robert Clark, while in 2017 he interned at Dimitris’ Papaioannou production The Great Tamer. In 2018 he co-created, together with Andi Xhuma, the piece Ok, that’s you.., which showed during the New Choreographers Festival held at Onassis Stegi. He teaches contemporary dance at the Mari Hadjimichali professional dance school. In 2019 he was invited to teach at the Greek National School of Dance in Athens and at the Tirana Ballet Academy.
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).