Treasures of the Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi Collection (2024)

The exhibition presents essential works of printmaking and printed art from the Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi Collection, which was donated to the University of Thessaly by the Bellasi couple in February 2022, as well as selected works from the private collection of Mrs Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi. This unique collection for Greece includes two hundred works by internationally renowned Greek and foreign artists of significant range, artistic quality, and aesthetics. The exhibition focuses mainly on highlighting the collectors' choices, trying to delineate for the viewers the 'biography' of a collection that began to take shape during the 1970s in Italy. The exhibition sheds light on the path of this unique, internationally renowned collection, whose initial aim was to be offered to the citizens of Volos, the donor’s place of origin. The exhibition includes works by internationally recognized great artists who have already entered the history of modernist art worldwide, such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Lucio Fontana, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Klinger, André Masson, Marcel Duchamp, Lucio Fontana, Jean Tinguely, Marino Marini, Arman Fernandez, César (Baldaccini), Victor Vasarely, Hans Hartung, Alberto Burri, Max Bill, etc. as well as works by renowned Greek artists such as Yannis Spyropoulos, Alekos Kontopoulos, Yannis Moralis, Nikos Hadjikyriakos Gikas, Yannis Tsarouchi, etc. The exhibition presents the range of engraving and printmaking techniques as well as the expressive specificity of each applied technique, such as woodcut, engraving, etching, aquatint, lithography, silkscreen, collage, etc., with emphasis on engraving methods and techniques as used by contemporary artists. Works by international representatives of printmaking, such as Felix Vallotton, Volker Kuhn, Yvette Balif, Angela Colombo, Diana Pietro, Gianfranco Ferroni, Dante Maffei, Sandro Martini, Giulia Napoleone, Ugo Nespolo, Walter Valentini, Vladimir Velickovic, Karel Demel, Kunito Nagaoka, Endre Szász, Dorothea Wight, etc. are presented. as well as Greek artists who have been identified with the history of printmaking in Greece, such as: Dimitris Galanis, Alexandros Korogiannakis, Angelos Theodoropoulos, Petros (Papavassiliou), Vasso Katraki, Tassos (Alevisos), Voula Massoura. The University of Thessaly organized the exhibition at the Giorgio de Chirico Art Centre in Volos in collaboration with the Committee for the Management of the Pietro Bellasi and Katerina Papageorgiou Bellasi Collection (4/12/2024-31/1/2025).

GOING VIRAL (2022)

 

The aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic literally illustrates the meaning of the word “viral” and magnifies the importance of unity on a global scale. It shows our interdependence as human beings and how imminent the effect is of one individual on the entire collective. It also reveals how our beings are dependent upon our entanglement with the natural world we are born into and the technical world we have created. Inspired by this, the exhibition addresses issues such as displacement, identity, embodiment, social cohesion, feminist care and posthumanism, in a step of taking action, in the spread of thoughts, ideas, feelings and deeds. The exhibition GOING VIRAL, at STEINZEIT Galerie in Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg organized by AthenSYN presents positions by 15 contemporary Greek artists. 

TALE OF X CITIES ONLINE FESTIVAL WITH ON SITE EVENTS IN 12 CITIES ACROSS NORTHERN GREECE (2021)

 

The project Tale of X Cities (part of the Common Lab project) is an experiment of art for social change, aiming at the empowerment of communities through art. The project brought together for the first time more than 20 institutions and 150 participants from 12 cities across Northern Greece. It rounds up its first year with a 2021 festival that takes place online and in various sites in all the participating cities. The participants works which bring us stories from their cities, and local events by the partner institutions, are presented alongside talks and discussions that explore the essence of Tale of X Cities' philosophy and highlight the future possibilities of socially engaged art. At the same time, audiences explore the festival content through specially designed info-points, installed in public spaces in all participating cities. Tale of X Cities (part of Common Lab) is a project by ArtBOX and Goethe Institut Thessaloniki. 

MOMAFAD - Curating Ephemeral Icons (2021)

Contribution to MOMAFAD with Curating Ephemeral Icons and a presentation in the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in Athens

What is the culture of modern Greece? (2021)

 

Participation in the documentary “Why 21? - 12 Questions ”Episode 11: What is the culture of modern Greece? (Presentation-Research-Editor-in-Chief: Marilena Katsimi, Pierros Tzanetakos, Director: Elena Lalopoulou, Research Associate: Christos Chrysanthopoulos)

https://www.ertflix.gr/docs/giati-21-12-erotimata-ep11-ti-einai-o-neo-ellinikos-politismos/

FREIRAUM ONLINE SUMMIT (2020)

 

The Freiraum Online Summit is part of the Freiraum Festival 2020, a collaborative, decentralized, democratized festival taking place simultaneously in the physical and the digital worlds. Freiraum is a project of the Goethe Instituts in Europe.

The festival has been developed jointly by more than 40 organizations spread around Europe, and includes more than 20 Local Events, dealing with issues that have been accelerated by the recent pandemic crisis: the “State of Freedom in Europe today: the ongoing biopolitical crisis and emerging social movements", and the “State of the Arts: new formats and audiences”. During the three days at the end of October (30/10-1/11), established thinkers and audiences around Europe gather to discuss these issues, online and offline, in specially conceived events that transform the local into a subjective center. 

The Online Summit was organized by ArtBOX. It combines a studio and teleconferencing platform (zoom). It includes talks, discussions, artistic interventions especially made for the online format, and live connection with the local events held by the Freiraum partners. The “State of the Arts: new formats and audiences” was organised in partnership with the Common Lab project by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki & ArtBOX, in the framework of Goethe-Institut's Excellency Initiatives 2020-21, in collaboration with TIF-Helexpo (GR).

Άρθρο της Βασιλικής Γραμματικογιάννης

HOMEMADE EXOTICA (2019)

Since the beginning of the European idea, Athens has been an exoticized utopia. Recently, as a result of the 2009 worldwide financial crisis, Athens has become the exotic scene of a global drama that has attracted many, including the curators of the recent documenta14.
The exhibition HOMEMADE EXOTICA, at FREIRAUM in der Box in Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg organized by AthenSYN presents 16 contemporary Greek artists. What can "learning from Athens" mean in a time of upheaval for Europe, in which all values rooted in European soil that underpin our cultural heritage are questioned? What is left after the demystification of a country, which has been subject to stereotyping since 18th-century philhellenism, labeled a tourist paradise, and imprinted with the stigma of the crisis? Why are these questions essential for our coexistence in an ethically corroded system?
Some artworks tend to surround every day, mundane and almost invisible with mystique, fantasy, and grace. This exotic re-enchantment of our world is often done by paying particular attention to the small details of private interiors or personal mementos. Other works apply the visual rhetoric of the past, that being the techniques of Renaissance-like, chiaroscuro painting, the detailed observation of society, or even the dismantling of abstract painting in the painterly installations. Hidden facets of Athenian life are uncovered as well as unveils aspects of characters shaping the intellectual life of the city. Cultural stereotypes and biased points of view are discussed; as well as cultural cross-overs and entanglements.
The artworks of the exhibition Homemade Exotica induce an almost experiential immersion and invite viewers to become participant in the artworks’ area of research, the Athenian life and its fragile poetics - while at the same time inviting the viewer to dismantle narratives around a mythical place of ancient and contemporary times. Athens acts as a prime example of stereotyping images and utopias of "the other" which tend to get in the way of essential communication and exchange, no matter which whom or what.