ILIOVASILEMATA is a two-channel video installation that explores contrasting spatial futures along the Athens Riviera: the tightly controlled mega-development The Ellinikon and the raw, informal cruising area of Limanakia. Filmed over a year, the work places these landscapes in dialogue, revealing how different forces shape access, desire, and public space.
On one screen, the camera traces the rapid construction of Ellinikon, gradually obscuring the horizon and eclipsing the sun. This visual progression becomes a metaphor for disappearance: of shared views, public access, and open time. Framed as progress, the development functions as a symbol of exclusion and enclosure.
The second screen presents the cliffs and hidden paths of Limanakia, focusing on lesbian cruising within a cruising culture historically dominated by cis gay men. Reclaiming the safety and pleasure of public space from the perspective of transfeminist and queer bodies, the work challenges not only institutional exclusions but also internal erasures within queer subcultures.
Amid profound transformation along the Athens Riviera, ILIOVASILEMATA holds open the tension between control and improvisation, enclosure and intimacy, inviting reflection on what kinds of futures are being built, and for whom. The title references the 1958 song Iliovasilemata (Sunsets), a marker of cultural transition from traditional rebetiko to mainstream nightlife in postwar Athens.
Poster design by Sylvia Sachini
ILIOVASILEMATA
SOFIA DONA
Site-Specific Presentation
Thursday, 2 July 2026 | 20:00
We warmly invite you to a site-specific presentation of ILIOVASILEMATA, an ongoing project by Sofia Dona, taking place on Thursday, 2 July, at 20:00, at A’ Limanakia, the very site where the work is being developed and enters into dialogue with the surrounding landscape.
This public presentation forms part of the project’s research process while the work is still in development. It opens the evolving work to a collective experience of observation, discussion, and reflection, creating space for new readings that may further inform its trajectory.
Location
Καντίνα του Λευτέρη, A’ Λιμανάκια / Lefteris’ Canteen, A’ Limanakia
Transportation
Στάση Λεωφορείου Α’ Λιμανάκια / Bus Stop A’ Limanakia
Στάση Λεωφορείου επιστροφής / Return Bus Stop: Α’ Λιμανάκια
Τελευταίο λεωφορείο: 23:40 / Last bus departs at: 23:40
Video stills, Iliovasilemata, Elena Sarantopoulou & Sofia Dona
Sofia Dona is a visual artist and architect based in Athens and Munich. Working primarily through site-specific practices, she creates installations and video works that challenge familiar spatial and social structures. Her interdisciplinary practice centers on interruptions—sudden breaks in historical narratives or everyday life that reveal hidden mechanisms of power and control. Viewed through a queer lens, these moments challenge normative ideas of space, identity, and belonging, often highlighting the experiences of those pushed to the margins. Her projects engage with the material realities of structural violence—such as borders, surveillance, and necropolitics—while opening space for collective reimagination. These interruptions mark moments of resistance and activism, acting as catalysts for awareness, dissent, and transformation. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Gropius Haus at the Bauhaus Foundation (2021), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2020), Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura in Tijuana (2019), nGbK Berlin (2017), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino (2016), and EMST in Athens (2013). She received the City of Munich Prize for Architecture (2018) and has been a fellow of Onassis AiR (2023), ARTWORKS (2022), and a Fulbright scholar in Los Angeles (2016). Her new project Pitch Invaders was comissioned for τhe Public Art Munich Focus Year 2026. She is a member of the queer-feminist film collective Nionia Films and the Errands group art collective.