NEWS: 30th Anniversary of Art Athina Operates with New Staff and Robust Programming
The international art fair, open from September 14-17, brings 59 galleries from across the globe to the center of Athens
Zappeion Megaron is the location of the first modern Olympic games, and the home of this year’s Art Athina.
Art Athina, one of the oldest art fairs in Europe, is celebrating its 30th annual edition this week at the historic Zappeion Megaron. This year’s international contemporary art fair is led by new staff who have established a differentiated approach to programming compared to other years. The participating galleries and art spaces are from 59 countries, with a majority from Greece and Cyprus, including The Breeder, Dio Horia Gallery, Korai Project Space, and Marginalia Gallery.
This year’s programming is complete with talks, video presentations, performance art, and educational events on topics ranging from Greek and Mediterranean social relations, refugee crises, art in hospitality, historical imaginations, and more.
Participating talks, curated by Danai Giannoglou, co-founder and curator of Enterprise Projects, a project space in Athens, address issues that directly affect the domestic visual art scene in Greece. Discussions are centered on four themes: the debate about the hospitality industry and the way contemporary art is becoming an integral part of the hotel experience and affecting the market, publishing and how book editions become visual objects, fields of fermentation, and archival environments, and the leading role that artist residency programs play in shaping the Athens art scene.
Akis Kokkinos, an independent curator, lecturer, and commissioner who is the founding director of DEO projects in Crete, has curated I miss you more than I remember you, a screen-based program presented in an outdoor cinema setting at the Zappeion Gardens. In light of the current turbulent era marked by the resurgence of far-right movements in the Greek parliament, the refugee shipwreck, and earthquakes in Turkey and Syria earlier this year, I miss you more than I remember you engages with the current geopolitical anxieties, conflicted historical imagination, and petrified memories, and suggests alternative forms of solidarity and kinship across cultures and borders. The title of this program derives from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a novel by poet Ocean Vuong who embraces the distinctiveness of each person's identity while encouraging a collective journey towards understanding and empathy.
Artists from Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, and Lebanon are participants of this moving image presentation, and share documentary and fictional films that explore the relationship between land, vulnerable communities, and the history making of the south-eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. These creations will be projected on a large-scale inflatable screen and serve as a temporary public monument in the garden.
The performance art program is a consistent presence at Art Athina, and this year it is curated by Panos Giannikopoulos, a program coordinator for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Arts Fellowship Program of ARTWORKS. Using the body as the primary artistic material, the 13 works presented refer to the process of objectification and subject formation, social relations, the economy, political claims, and the multi-level relationship and dissolution of identities. In this presentation, performance art becomes a tool for investigating power relations, a form of memory transmission, and ultimately a different approach to understanding the world.
Art Athina also presents the exhibition In Conversation with a Chair by Mare Studio. In this show, the chair – an ordinary utilitarian object – is transformed into a symbol that brings viewers closer to Greek tradition, design and craftsmanship, which summarizes more than 100 years of history and bears the signature of Greek artists.
In the "secret" garden of the Zappeion Megaron is the Zappeion Garden x BlueCycle project where BlueCycle, a circular economy initiative which aims to reuse marine plastic waste generated from shipping and fishing activities, designed a complete garden project with furniture and objects that bear its visual and environmental stamp.
In collaboration with the MOMus Museum Alex Mylona, the second Art Athina Prize will be given to a new artist, up to 45 years old, living and working in Greece, represented by a participating gallery.
Art Athina 2023 is organized by the Hellenic Art Galleries Association, operating under the patronage of H.E. the President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and is a production of BeBest. The event is about to be included in the Regional Program "Attica 2021-2027.”
