Elissavet Sfyri (b. 1994, Athens) completed her postgraduate studies in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. She is a Fine Art graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been presented in a number of international venues, such as the CICA Museum in South Korea; MAMCO, the contemporary art museum of Geneva; as well as the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan. In August 2018, she produced and curated the Saline Art Residency, a contemporary art event of permanent public sculptures, to which she also contributed as an artist.
Thanasis Neofotistos is a film director, writer and architect from Greece. He is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents programme and Head Programmer for the International Student Competition at the Drama International Short Film Festival. His short film, Patision Avenue (13’-2018), premiered at the 75th Venice Film Festival, won 3 awards during the 41st Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (Jury, Canal+, EFA) and was selected for screening in more than 60 top-tier film festivals. His film Route-3 (13’-2019) premiered at the competition section of the 44th Toronto International Film Festival; Greek School Prayer (20’-2014) was his successful film school thesis (Golden Dionysus at Drama), while Sparkling Candles (9’-2019), his LGBTQ+ sparkling short film, premiered at the 43rd Frameline Film Festival. Currently, he is in the process of securing funds for his first-debut feature film, Peter and the Wolf, which he envisions as a dark, coming-of-age fairytale. The film is supported by the Greek Film Centre and the EU’s Media programme and has been part of important script development programmes such First-Films-First (Goethe Institute); the Mediterranean Film Institute’s (MFI) Script 2 Film workshop; and the Script Station workshop, part of the Sarajevo Talents programme. His next feature film project, “Wild Boars”, is currently in development under the auspices of Torino Film Lab and the MFI.
Kelly Tsipni-Kolaza is an independent curator and producer based in Athens, Greece. Between 2012 and 2015 she held curatorial positions in public art institutions in London such as the Serpentine Galleries, The Architecture Foundation and the Contemporary Art Society. In 2016-2017, Tsipni-Kolaza worked as a Curatorial Assistant for documenta14 in Athens and Kassel. Between 2018 and 2020 she was the Exhibition Manager of the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art and the Associate Curator for Art Night in London, UK. Curatorial projects include: Orange Trees that Talk, a mediated performance by Cooking Sections held at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm (2015); Sonic Revolutions: Vibrations from the Levant, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2016); Litany for Amplified Voices, in the context of SKG Bridges Festival, Thessaloniki (2019). In 2018, she co-founded “miss dialectic”, an art operator that aims to support artistic and curatorial research with a strong focus on education and the production of new work through interdisciplinary collaborations. In 2015 she received the Forecast Platform Curatorial Award.
Ersi Varveri (1984) is a visual artist living and working between Antwerp, Athens and Syros (Greece). She holds a diploma (BA) from Athens School of Fine arts (2011), a Master’s degree from Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp (In-Situ Department, 2015) and a Master of Research in Art and Design from Sint Lucas School of Art, Antwerp (2016). From January 2017 to February 2020 she co-hosted the artist-run space the Pink House (Antwerp) and co-founded the publishing workshop pink house press.
Her work covers a wide range of artistic mediums, often dealing with the notion of space. Through her recent research project series Becoming a space, she created a series of clothes and embroideries, photographs, ink drawings and short fictional stories, while she also discovered the zine publication process and experimented with self-publishing as a tool for a flexible (self-)reflection and creative archiving practice.
Currently she is conducting a research project connected to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, under the title one space becoming another. Together with Gijs Waterschoot, visual artist and collaborator for this project, they see their experience in the Pink House as a background to research further new possibilities and necessities of artist-run spaces.
Aria Boumpaki is a dance artist living and working in Athens. Raised on the island of Crete, she decided to move to Athens and study at the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) at the age of eighteen. After performing for a number of Greek dance companies, she received a scholarship by the Onassis Foundation to continue her training at the Institut Chorégraphique International (ΙCI) (Montpellier, France), where she completed the exerce choreographic research program. Her artistic work engages strongly with the question of community. Exploring dance bodies in different realities, she creates projects that combine a multitude of formats, structures and localities, ranging from conventional stage pieces to exhibitions, site-specific works, community projects, text and video installations. Fascinated by the body and individual physical identity, she often invites non-professional performers to explore or attempt a redefinition of the notion of ‘stage bodies’, as well as that of the reality of ‘being’. She values both instinct and knowledge, investigates movement as consciousness and seeks to introduce tenderness as revolution. Alongside her work as creator and performer, Aria regularly gives workshops and designs pedagogical content. She has collaborated with the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, the Onassis Cultural Center, Centre Pompidou, the National Theatre of Northern Greece and the French Institute of Athens. Her latest projects are supported by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and she is a danceweb scholar for IMPULSTANZ -Vienna International Festival 2020.
Eliza Soroga is a Greek artist working across forms and artistic languages within Contemporary Art Practice as an attempt to explore the dialogue between everyday life and performance. She holds an MA in Performance Making (Goldsmiths University of London) and an MA in Cultural Theory (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens). She was named Overall Winner in Performance & Video Art during the 11th International Arte Laguna Prize competition (Venice, 2017). Her work has been commissioned by the Athens & Epidaurus Festival (2018), the City of Athens (2019) and Arts Council England (2013-2017). Her works have been showcased at Victoria & Albert Museum, Battersea Arts Centre, The Yard Theatre, and Rich Mix in London; Forum des images and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France; EYE Film Institute and social centre OT301 in Amsterdam; TANZRAUSCHEN Wuppertal Festival in Germany, and many more. Eliza works is a visiting lecturer teaching architecture and design in undergraduate programmes offered by Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London); University of East London; and Middle East Technical University (Ankara).
Ioanna is a dancer born and based in Athens. In 2007 she graduated from the Greek National School of Dance. She received a scholarship from the Pratsikas Brothers Scholarship Foundation and continued her studies in contemporary dance at the Folkwang Hochschule (later renamed to Folkwang Universität der Κünste)in Essen, Germany, As a dancer and performer, she has collaborated with various dance companies and choreographers such as Ioanna Portolou, Angeliki Stellatou, Maria Koliopoulou, Mariela Nestora, Fotis Nikolaou, Marianna Kavallieratos, Persa Stamatopoulou, Lia Tsolaki, Harry Koushos, Myrto Grapsa, Olia Lydaki, Haris Mandafounis and others. Together with choreographer Maria Koliopoulou’s Prosxima Dance Company, she received an award during the 5th Festival Culturel International de la Danse Contemporaine, Algiers (2013), for the piece 21-mneme. She has been teaching contemporary dance in children, dance students and adults since 2008 and has collaborated with several dance schools and studios in Athens, such as HoroHronos Professional Dance School, Elena Vakalopoulou Dance School, Studio Dan.c.ce, Horos Dance School, etc. Ever since 2017, she has been a member of the Onassis Stegi Dancing to Connect programme, which is addressed to secondary school students. As a choreographer in theatre performances, she has collaborated with Rafi lyrical theatre company, director Pandelis Dendakis and Marilita Lambropoulou, while she has also served as assistant choreographer to Lia Tsolaki for the opera The Nose, directed by Peter Stein and presented at the Finnish National Opera.
Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou is an art historian, critic, and curator. She is currently finishing a PhD at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (EHESS) on the subterranean imaginary in contemporary art, especially with regard to nuclear spaces. Among her recent exhibitions are: Scarred Land, a series of films on art and nuclear colonialism featuring work by Susan Schuppli and Inas Halabi, which were projected in Groningen during the cultural week After Hiroshima; the solo exhibition Canopy Canopy by Susanne Kriemann at Framer Framed in Amsterdam (with Ruby de Vos); The Opposing Shore in the context of the parallel program of the 7th Moscow Biennial. She co-edited an issue of the academic journal Kunstlicht on Nuclear Aesthetics. In 2017, she organized Nuclear Waste Weeks, a series of screenings, workshops and visits to nuclear sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. She was a fellow at Carleton University, Ottawa and a visiting scholar at the Environmental Humanities Center, VU University Amsterdam. Her work has been supported by the Onassis Foundation, the Goulandris Foundation and the National Research Council of Canada. She was a guest teacher at Carleton University and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.