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.
Gabriel Tzafka was born in April 1986. He holds a postgraduate degree in film directing from the School of Film of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2010) and is a graduate of the Super 16 film school in Copenhagen. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Sarajevo Talents. His short films Oblivion, Sailor and Euroman have been screened in numerous international festivals, winning over 30 international awards. In 2017, Thorn, his first feature film (a Danish-Greek co-production) received the Eurimages Lab Projects Award. His second feature film, Ode To Joy, was developed with the support of Creative Europe’s MEDIA Program and of the Nipkow Programm (Germany) and selected to participate in Cinéfondation’s L’Atelier program. In 2019, The Right One, his second feature film, was selected to participate in Cannes Film Festival’s The Factory program and screened during Director’s Fortnight. He is a member of the European Film Academy, the Danish Film Academy and the Danish Film Directors’ Association. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Spyros Skandalos was born in Athens, Greece and has studied audiovisual arts at the Ionian University. He has been making short films and documentaries since 2014. In 2021, he co-founded the production company Assumed Position. His latest short, Horsepower, was funded by the Greek Film Center and has received a Best Actress award as well as a Golden Athena at the Greek Short Stories – In competition section of the Athens International Film Festival. In addition, Horsepower was awarded the Special Jury Award, the Cinematography Award and the Visual Storytelling Award of the Greek Society of Cinematographers at the Drama International Short Film Festival. Ilena, his first short film, which was also supported by the Greek Film Center, received the Best Short Fiction Award and the Audience Award at the 2nd Short Films Competition organized by the Onassis Foundation. His next short, Oxytocin, is funded by the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation’s Microfilm program. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Georgia Bardi is a 2D animation director based in London and Athens. She holds a BA in Graphic Design and Visual Communication from the University of West Attica and an MA in Animation from the University of the Arts London. Most of her films are autobiographical and stem from a desire to communicate her feelings. She aspires to create films which are more than a story, allowing space for people to identify with. In her latest film, entitled Watch me Vanish, she explores the notion of a past and a present existing simultaneously. Watch me Vanish is a 2D film shot frame by frame and animated on paper with the use of charcoal, in which the story unfolds through a succession of thoughts that do not follow a linear narrative structure. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2022).
Konstantinos Karamaghiolis was born in Athens in 1990. In 2012, he completed his studies in cinema as well as his first short film, Sphinx. The film was presented in 35 international film festivals, including: LA Shorts International Film Festival, Drama International Short Film Festival, Istanbul International Short Film Festival, Tirana International Film Festival, Cinema City in Novi Sad (Serbia), and Athens International Film Festival. In 2015, he completed The Iron Island, his first feature-length documentary which was screened in several documentary film festivals. He lives and works in Athens as a director (also of TV commercials) and screenwriter and has collaborated with the Greek TV network ANT1 and with the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, as a producer for one of the public radio stations. He is currently developing his second film, Subbuteo (scheduled to be filmed in 2023) and is writing his first feature-length fiction film.
Danai Anagnostou is a creative producer for film and artist moving images; and a doctoral researcher in production studies. In 2019, she co-founded Kenno Filmi, a production company in Helsinki which hosts projects by international filmmakers, researchers, and artists. Her work is shaped through the participatory, interdisciplinary, and intersectional production practices that stem from the collaborative aspects of filmmaking. In addition to her practice, she studies contemporary conducts and strategies for producing films; and works on her doctoral thesis undertaken at Aalto University in Finland with the support of Kone Foundation. She has completed a postgraduate degree in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art at Aalto University, (2020), as well as a postgraduate degree in Architectural Design at Vakalo College in Athens (2016). She is an alumna of Berlinale Talents (2019); Platform for Feminist Leadership (2020); and Talents Sarajevo (2022). Her works have been presented in museums and exhibitions spaces such as the Finnish pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, Frestas – Trienal de Artes 2020/21 (Brazil); Μuseum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Finland); Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam); Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM); and Gösta Serlachius Museum (Finland). She curates Society of Cinema, a recurring film program at the Museum of Impossible Forms in Helsinki since 2019. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by Artworks (2022).
Caterina Stamou holds a BA in Communication, Media and Culture from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and a European Joint Master’s Degree in English and American Studies awarded jointly by Paris Diderot University (France) and Ca’ Foscari University (Italy). She has worked in various cultural organizations in the UK, France, Italy and Greece, and has participated in educational and residency programs in Bulgaria, Italy and the US. In her curatorial work she seeks to highlight how art interacts with various forms of community building and political action by creating an open space for renegotiating our relationship with language, history, communal living and society. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research focuses on reparative practices at the intersection of art, community and social change. She is currently a member of the Athens Art Book Fair team and been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by Artworks (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).