ΕλληνικάArt Exhibition “(Co)Laboratory on citizenship” | May 20 – June 22, 2022
KOLLEKTIVA for social innovation and culture, and Victoria Square Project invite you to the exhibition “(Co)Laboratory on citizenship”.
“(Co)Laboratory on citizenship”, its works and actions that they call for deal with identity, Greekness, equality, diversity, democracy, integration, not only as a representation but as a lived experience of coexistence and co-creation.
Six artists, from different backgrounds and practices but at the same time with many similar elements, surrounded by curators, anthropologists and activists, discuss and create arising from the current citizenship law in Greece. Through a collaborative process consisting of meetings and workshops with partners from Generation 2.0 and Anasa Cultural Center they inspire and are inspired by questioning whether artistic creation could evoke social functioning and strengthen participation in tackling crises, inequalities and stereotypes, and whether culture could contribute to social change, development and activation of communities.
It is an experimental community project based on interaction and intersection of ideas, experiences and beliefs of different people, as well as the need for all of us to take action and participate in the community and the exploration of further convergences between artistic creation and assertions of fellow citizens. “(Co)Laboratory on citizenship” aims to act as an amplifier to the assertions for equality before the law and general equality of people of migrant origin, but also to explore ways for participation and not interference in the continuous effort to eliminate limits of diversity and to define the “Other”, supported through collaboration and intersection of ideas and by presenting projects by artists of different cultural backgrounds. In this way, the peculiarity of the action lies in the fact that it gives equal weight to the coherent and interactive processes that characterise the projects.
ARTISTS
Eirene Efstathiou is a visual artist working in a variety of different media from painting and printmaking to performance to small scale installations, her practice investigates collective and archival memory, sentiment, affect and how these function in the public sphere. Efstathiou is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University, (Studio Art Diploma and BFA, 2003) where she studied painting and printmaking, and the Athens School of Fine Arts, (MFA 2010) where she is currently a PhD candidate. Efstathiou has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States. With solo shows at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens, Greece and Irene Laub Gallery, Brussels, Belgium and group shows at, EVA International, Limerick, Ireland, DEPO, Istanbul, Turkey, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, Italy, EMST Collection at documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, DESTE at the Musum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece, Bozar Center for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, and Benaki Museum. In 2009 she was the recipient of the DESTE Prize, DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece, in 2019 she was the recipient of the NEON grant for post-graduate study, Athens Greece, and in 2020 she was the recipient of the Artworks Grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Athens Greece. Efstathiou Lives and works in Athens.
Sevastiana Konstaki (Rhodes, 1989) is an architect and artist. She is an Artworks Fellow 2020 (Stavros Niarchos Foundation). She graduated from the University of Thessaly, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Architectural Design/INSTEAD-Parapoesis (distinction, 2013 and 2016). Her research interests and artistic practice focuses on the “in-between”, exploring objects-narratives on the reconnection of the human body and the body imaginary: psycho-woven clothes, collages, maps, drawings, art-books and representational tools intersecting between architecture, art, fashion and anthropology. Among other things, she is member of the team running the artistic project Institute of Post-Epicurean Garden —a series of gatherings and artistic discussions in Drosia, Attica— and works as an artistic and creative director for Bespoke Communications and artistic director and curator of the “Looming Together” and “The Paravan”at the Victoria Square Project. She is the founder of the Studio Asevia (https://studioasevia.com). Previously, she was an exhibition assistant of documenta14 (2017) and project manager and coordinator of Victoria Square Project (2017–2018). She has participated in group exhibitions such as “Womanhoods” (Noucmas, 2021), “Emfylo-poiein: to construct the Gender” (a.antonopoulou.art, 2019) and “Liquid Rings” (Victoria Square Project, 2017).
Malvina Panagiotidi (Athens, 1985) lives and works in Athens. She studied architecture at the University of Thessaly and art at the postgraduate program “Art in Context” at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program (2018) and the Spyropoulos Foundation Award (2016). Selected shows include: “Mr Robinson Crusoe stayed home. Adventures of design in times of crisis”, Benaki Museum, Athens (2021); “When you touch about me, I think myself”, Signs, Istanbul (2020); “Gone today, here tomorrow”, AnnexM- Athens Concert Hall (2019); ”All Souls Day-Part II”, Rodeo Gallery, Piraeus (2019); “Constellations in the dirt”, Neon & Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, Kouphonisi Archaeological Collection building (2018); “It was evening all afternoon”, ‘You cannot hide for more than seven years’ curatorial venture, Athens (2018); “The Equilibrists”, DESTE Foundation & New Museum, Benaki Museum, Athens (2016); “Hypnos Project”, Onassis Cultural Center, Athens (2016); “The predictions of a one-night king”, Chalet Society, Paris (2015); “A monument for the first homosexual emancipation movement”, HKW, Berlin (2015). Since 2009 she is also a founding member of the artistic research group Saprophytes.
Theo Prodromidis (b. 1979, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist and director based in Αthens, Greece. He studied Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster and was awarded an MFA in Fine Art by Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007. His work has been exhibited and screened in galleries, museums and festivals such as the 3rd Industrial Art Biennial, Furtherfield, Galerija Nova, State of Concept Athens, the 1st and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the 4th Αthens Biennale, i.a. Since 2017, he has contributed to The School of Redistribution by Future Climates, to Project P.R.E.S.S. (Provision of Refugee Educatiοn and Support Scheme) by the Hellenic Open University and part of WHW Akademija’s program “To care for another, radical politics of care” and as a member of the Institute of Radical Imagination he co-organizes The School of Mutation. For 2020-21, he is the co-leader of “An album from our square” at Victoria Square Project, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University and a fellow of AFIELD Mentorship 2020 by Council for the participatory project “Laying down law”. He is also currently conducting artistic research on participation and citizenship with the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and is participating, through the production of new work, in the program “Cοmmunities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation” initiated by WHW and supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation. Theo Prodromidis is a fellow of ARTWORKS, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program and he was a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals of Onassis AiR 2021-22.
George Salameh is a Greek-Lebanese visual artist and filmmaker. He was born in Beirut, in 1973. He studied Film at Paris VII St. Denis. He has lived in Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, France, Egypt, and Sicily. Since 1989, he has created video & photography installations, directed documentaries, experimental and essay films.
Urok Shirhan is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image and speech in relation to power and affect. As an Iraqi-born, once asylum-seeker turned Dutch citizen, issues surrounding identity and displacement are of particular interest, and her projects are often informed by her familyʼs history of political migrations. Urokʼs latest body of research considers the role of sound (and the voice in particular) in relation to forms of collectivity, dissidence and Belonging.
Recent presentations include The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete, Greece; The Mosaic Rooms, London; e-flux Film & Video, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany; the Derivative at the Beirut Art Center; The City Talks Back icw Theatrum Mundi at Onassis Stegi, Athens; Casco Institute Working for the Commons, Utrecht; Theater of Operations at MoMA PS1, New York; Post Opera at TENT, Rotterdam; Live Works at the 38th Drodesera Festival, Italy; 5th Biennial for Young Art at NCCA, Moscow and Sonic Continuum at the Nottingham Contemporary. As of October 2020 Urok has been hosting ‘Sound Without Image’: a monthly live show on Radio Alhara, broadcasting from Bethlehem, Palestine.
Urok holds an MA (Hons.) in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London and was a Research Fellow at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in 2019/2020. She has been in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London and held fellowships at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam; Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon.
(Co)Laboratory for citizenship
May 20 – June 22, 2022
Victoria Square Project [13, Elpidos Street, 10434, Victoria Square]
Free entrance
Opening hours
Monday – Saturday
12:00 – 20:00
There will be the possibility of mediation, Tuesday-Saturday 12: 30-14: 30, 17: 30-19:30
Opening
May 19, 2022, 19:30
More info at www.victoriasquareproject.gr
ORGANISERS
KOLLEKTIVA is a non-profit organisation that works at the intersection of social innovation, culture and sustainable development to encourage positive transitions to more fair and viable futures.
Victoria Square Project is a contemporary art space, a meeting point to the community, a deriving point for discussions on identity, coexistence, integration and co-creation. VSP’s major donor is Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). VSP’s curatorial program is implemented in collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung.
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Generation 2.0 RED Anasa Cultural Center
The project is implemented with the financial support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, and Cultural Development Non Profit Organisation NEON.
Contributors
A collaboration of KOLLEKTIVA for social innovation and culture with Victoria Square Project
CONVENORS
Dafni Crema, Sophia Handaka, Polyna Kosmadaki, Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou
Victoria Square Project TEAM
VSP Director: Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou
Production Coordination: Dorothea Kritikou
Community development and training programmes actualization: Dafni Crema & Marina Naki
Administrative assistance: Iro Ziozia
Communication and Development Coordination: Ioanna Ntali & Aria Saridi
Graphic Design: Irini Thanou
Mediators: Dafni Crema, Dorothea Kritikou, Marina Naki, Ioanna Ntali, Aria Saridi, Irini Thanou, Iro Ziozia
