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Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje Opening: Wednesday 25 June, 20:00 The creative, artistic dialogue between four visual artists, Fani Boudouroglou, Rania Emmanouilidou, Lia Psoma, and Bilal Yilmaz, is presented in the exhibition “Graceland Paradox: Navigating Uncertainty” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, from 25 June to 17 August 2025. Through uncertainty, experimentation and mobilisation, the exhibition urges viewers to reflect on causes, consequences and possibilities. The works draw from science fiction, urban protests and historical revolts to encourage the audience’s reflection on what comes next. The process of searching for possibilities becomes a process of becoming aware of the capitalist impasse and, above all, an exercise in imagination regarding our own contribution and existence in possible dystopian or utopian futures. The exhibition is organised by the independent art and culture organisation Kontrapunkt as part of the KRIK Festival for Critical Culture, and is supported by MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts and the Embassy of Greece in North Macedonia. The three women artists, Boudouroglou, Emmanouilidou and Psoma, began working together during the pandemic, when they decided to use the time of imposed isolation to jointly reflect, experiment and create. A series of works that respond to key contemporary issues such as environmental collapse, forced population movements and the onslaught of technology were presented in 2022-23 in the exhibition “Graceland: The Triumph of an Uncertain Path” as part of the 8th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art of MOMus. At MoCA Skopje, this collaborative project is renewed and expanded with new works by the three artists and the participation of guest artist Bilal Yilmaz from Türkiye. At the heart of this new exhibition “Graceland Paradox: Navigating Uncertainty” lies the research conducted by the three artists around sustainable techniques and materials —bioplastics, crystals, handmade paper, rhizomes, materials in the phase of transition from raw material to ephemeral artistic medium— as a process of production and reflection. In dialogue with their works, Bilal Yilmaz expands the political and imaginative dimension of the exhibition. Inspired by contemporary protest movements —including recent mobilisations in Greece, North Macedonia and the wider region— the artist focuses on the erosion of democracy and the power of collective action. Through his work, he recalls the spirit of protest and criticises the mechanism of manipulated information. He calls on us to choose the images and actions that motivate us, and to bring them into our daily lives as acts of quiet, radical resistance. Curated by: Lydia Chatziiakovou Parallel eventsWednesday, 25 June 2025, 20:00  Short discussion-introduction to the main concepts and practices of the exhibition with the artists.Speakers: Tihomir Topuzovski (Director, MoCA Skopje), Anna Mykoniati (curator, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens), Thouli Misirloglou (Artistic Director, MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art). Moderators: Lydia Chatziiakovou (curator), Vladimir Janchevski (curator, MoCA). Thursday, 26 June 2025, 16:00-18:00 Workshop “Material experimentations in Graceland” with the artists Rania Emmanouilidou, Fani Boudouroglou, Lia Psoma. ©Fani Boudouroglou, Fernweh, 2022Video still

Other venues

Graceland Paradox: Navigating Uncertainty

Opening: Friday 21 March 2025, 20:00A track from the 80’s (Whip it, Devo), inspired by a novel from the 70’s (Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon) examines the collapse of a society, that stupefied by a delirium of overconsumption and information overload, worships the almost religious submission to technology —through which power is manifested, expanded, and normalized. And while these may have once seemed like strange signs of the times, nowadays we are discussing the consequences of this interaction and seeking ways to coexist, if not to reconsider our relationship with technology. The exhibition “Technofetishism: Whip it into Shape”, hosted in MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Warehouse B1, Pier A’, Port) in Thessaloniki, from 21 March until 31 August 2025, explores the fetishisation of technology by our contemporary techno-capitalist society, which has transformed technological objects into sources of sexual arousal, substitutes for desire, and venerated fetishes. The works presented offer a critical reflection on how technology mediates—and sometimes distorts—our notions of intimacy, eroticism, desire, and communication, our own identity, blurring the boundaries between freedom, compulsion, and constraint. The exhibition highlights the emerging power and dependency relationships between ourselves and technological media, which have now become extensions of our bodies. These relationships are both evident and inextricably linked to consumption and control.  The modern exaltation of technology has also exposed contemporary practices of self- and gender-representation, imposing warped ideals and standards of beauty. Through their works, the artists ask: Could we be experiencing the ultimate fulfillment of a technofetishistic society? And while these may have once seemed like mere peculiar signs of the times, today we are discussing the consequences of this enslavement and seeking ways to coexist with technology—if not to liberate ourselves from it. Curated by: Eirini Papakostantinou, Art Historian, Curator MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts Artists: Maria Antelman, Zisis Bliatkas, Thomas Diafas, Carla Gannis, Maria Glyka, Faith Holland, Kalos&amp;Klio, Casey Kauffmann, Echo Can Luo, Rosa Menkman, Eva Papamargariti, Moises Sanabria in collaboration with Tom Galle and John Yuyi, Super G (George Ouzounis), Theo Triantafyllidis, Anna Vasof, Emilio Vavarella, Vassilis Vlastaras, Maria Vozali As part of the exhibition’s parallel programme, there is also a collaboration with the Pure Identities 2 – HERizonsFestival in an event organized by the group In contACT org, featuring a photography exhibition and a series of live actions (21-23 March 2025) in MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts.  *A section in the exhibition contains content that may not be suitable for underage audience.

Experimental Center for the Arts

Technofetishism: Whip it into Shape

Opening: Thursday 13 February 2025, 19:00 The unexpected, the ambiguous and the enigmatic, the imaginary and the grotesque act as a conceptual and spatial grid for the exhibition entitled "a Cabinet of Curiosities" presented at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylonas, from 13 February to 31 August 2025. The periodical exhibitions’ space of the Museum in Thissio, Athens, is “conquered” by paintings, prints, sculptures, constructions and videos ‒works remarkably diverse in style, materials, qualities, sensitivities, visual values and aesthetic preferences‒ created by 78 artists.  Emerging in Europe during the Renaissance, cabinets of curiosities came to be identified with a collecting frenzy, aesthetic pleasure and amazement through their wondrous and rare exhibits: these ranged from works of art andrelics to strange and “exotic” artifacts from distant cultures, alongside scientific tools and instruments, objects from the natural world, and items related to medicine, zoology, botany, gemology, mineralogy, and astrology, as well as to the realms of the occult, alchemy, and magic. These cabinets, which can be considered precursors to modern museums, played a pivotal role in shaping Western perceptions of the "other", while also offering an aesthetic, social, anthropological and political space wirh numerous benefits of research. In the modern, extended Cabinet of Curiosities at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona, in a multiple connection of images and realities, the exhibits cover a broad thematic spectrum, opening portals to different worlds, times, and regions. The stories they tell, inventive and original, explore concepts such as life and death, nature and technology, vanity and paradox, violence and threat, myth and dream, erotic desire and libido. The exhibition "a Cabinet of Curiosities" functions as a proposal-challenge for a modern, new "cabinet" which, although apparently creates the fear of emptiness (horror vacui), can nevertheless function as a starting point for a new consideration of the present we live in. Curated by: Yannis Bolis, Art historian, Head of Department of Contemporary Sculpture, MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona  Artists: Giorgos Alexandridis, Angelos Antonopoulos, Mairy Antonopoulou, Annita Argiroiliopoulou, Michalis Arfaras, Lena Athanasopoulou, Manolis Baboussis, Theo Bargiotas, Lina Bebi, Mania Benissi, Emmanouil Bitsakis, Margarita Bofiliou, Fani Boudouroglou, Alkis Boutlis, Pantelis Chandris, Panos Charalambous, Giorgos Chatzispyrou (Looper), Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Elli Chrysidou, Lydia Dambassina, Martha Dimitropoulou, Chris Doulgeris, Tzeni Doupi, Rania Emmanouilidou, Panos Famelis, Marios Fournaris, Marina Genadieva, Takis Germenis, Leonidas Giannakopoulos, Nikos Giavropoulos, Giorgos Gyparakis, Marion Inglessi, Nikos Kachrimanis, Antonis Kapnisis, Aris Katsilakis, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Antigoni Kavvatha, Daphne Klagkou, Yannis Kondaratos, Alexandros Maganiotis, Thanos Makris, Dimitra Marouda, Panos Mattheou, Kyriaki Mavrogeorgi, Dimitris Merantzas, Christina Mitrentse, Eva Mourtzi, Nourako (Fanouris Moraitis), Nikos Papadimitriou, Antonis Papadopoulos, Xenia Papadopoulou, Aliki Pappa, Konstantinos Patsios, Natassa Poulantza, Vasilis Poulios, Periklis Pravitas, Lia Psoma, Ifigeneia Sdoukou, Nikos Sepetzoglou, Dimitra Siaterli, Zoe Sklepa, Miltos Skouras, Marios Spiliopoulos, Andreas Spiliotopoulos, Nikos Tranos, Giorgos Tsakiris, Giorgos Tserionis, Maritasa Tsimplaki, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Kostas Tsolis, Dimitris Tzamouranis, Andreas Vais, Vasilis Vasilakakis, Babis Venetopoulos, Andriana Verveti, Andreas Voussouras, Maria Xinopoulou, Katerina ZacharopoulouOfficial Air Carrier<img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_21.jpeg" width="221" height="156" data-entity-uuid="4012fa61-e4af-4a86-8efe-56c52348f216" data-entity-type="file" class="align-left" />     Media Sponsors <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_22.jpeg" width="417" height="112" data-entity-uuid="ad082dce-dbf9-45de-a48c-33b53d81c7db" data-entity-type="file" />

Museum Alex Mylona

Α Cabinet of Curiosities

Opening: Thursday 5 June 2025, 20:00<h6> </h6>In a world where hostility is increasing towards any person who dares to question the boundaries and borders of bodies and earth, in a society where the concept of gender includes all the anxieties, neuroses and concerns of modern man, the... creatures of the artist Marianna Ignataki compose a utopia, a place of alternative communities, where we all fit in and can be free. Her solo exhibition entitled "The Enlightened Ones, the Green Horses and Some More Bitches", which will be presented at the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki from 5 June to 14 September 2025, is the second production in the museum's Case Studio space, which is dedicated to the here-and-now of contemporary art and seeks to offer visibility to young and established artists and to bring the museum even closer to contemporary artistic creation.Using watercolor, drawing, painting and sculptural installations, Marianna Ignataki creates characters outside of boundaries, frames and identities, in a surrealistic universe. Her work ranges from minimalist scenes and portraits to exaggerated, kitschy, rococo inspired compositions. The influences of her personal journey in Greece, China and Germany and the borrowing of anthropological elements from all three of these cultures are evident in all of her visual depictions, emphasizing that horror, fear and "monsters" are the same everywhere and unite us all everywhere.Curated by: Theodore Markoglou, Art Historian, MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art Curator Marianna Ignataki was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1977. She studied Architecture at the Technische Universität in Vienna and Visual Arts at the School of Fine Arts of Saint-Etienne.She has presented many solo exhibitions such as (selection) The Secret Garden at Reiter galleries, Leipzig (2023), The Hole at Bark Berlin gallery (2021), In A Deep, Dark Forest They Were Braiding The Beards Of Parrots In Love at CAN Christina Androulidaki gallery, Athens (2019) and at the Municipal Gallery of Thessaloniki, Alatza Imaret, Thessaloniki (2018), The End of Magic at Outpost Slotervaart, Amsterdam (2012), Sphinx at Fake Space, Beijing (2011), This Joke Ain’t Funny Anymore at Zina Athanassiadou gallery, Thessaloniki (2009) et al.She has participated in a number of group shows in Europe, China and the USA, such as Allure of the Bizarre at the National Gallery of Athens (2025), TERRA DIASPORA – Changing Worlds, Kunstverein Göttingen (2024), A:PRÉS D:ESSÉRT, A:D: Curatorial, Berlin (2023), Kreatur, Reiter galleries, Berlin, (2022), Drawing Wow, Minuseins, Vienna (2022), KI-ΝΗΜΑΤΑ at Bouboulina Museum, Spetses (2021), Gods and Monsters, Blick Auf Die Jüngste Vergangenheit, Kunstverein Montez, Frankfurt (2021), Homeostasis, Frontviews at Heit, Berlin (2019), Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019), Am I that name or that image, MoCA Skopje (2019), Reverse the Perspective, Xiangsi Art Museum, Tianjin (2015), Dialog between Chinese and international artists, Taihang Huang Shan, Renmin University Museum, Beijing (2014) et al.Between 2010-2017 she was based in Beijing. She now lives and works between Berlin and Athens.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Marianna Ignataki. The Enlightened Ones, The Green Horses and Some More Bitches

Opening: Thursday 12 June 2025, 19:00 Acknowledging that the keenest observers of the world are either painters and artists, or scientists, the new exhibition at the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki "The King is Naked" -from 12 June to 14 September 2025- puts the quote from Andersen's well-known fairy tale at its center, identifying the acclaimed painters Vasilis Vasilakakis, Vangelis Gokas and Ilias Papailakis as its core protagonists. In an age obsessed with images yet intent on merely skimming through them, three painters have chosen to observe the world from a state of stillness —not in reaction, but in reverence to the image. Vasilis Vasilakakis (b. 1968), Vangelis Gokas (b. 1969) and Ilias Papailiakis (b. 1970) present their work in a single exhibition, pursuing an artistic dialogue that allows a conversation of textures, deep shadows, and colors, bringing together three leading figures of contemporary Greek painting, united, yet distinct. Each has pursued his own path, yet all share a common denominator: a devotion to painting as a spiritual practice as well as a deeply philosophical endeavor. The exhibition is therefore an attempt to stage a quiet rebellion of painting, against those who repeatedly proclaim its demise, only to be refuted time and again, and in celebration of its unique power to conjure new images and represent things that always escape our initial gaze. Curated by: Yannis Bolis, Areti Leopoulou, Art historians, MOMus Curators

The King is Naked. Vasilakakis, Gokas, Papailiakis

Opening: Wednesday 5 March 2025, 19:00 Humans and all aspects of their representation, in every context -familial, social, professional, gendered, microhistory as well as macrohistory- are put into… frames, at the new, photographic exhibition under the title “About Humans”, organised by MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Warehouse A’, Pier A’, Thessaloniki Port), from 5 March until 14 September 2025. The exhibition presents an anthology of 107 works by Greek photographers or of Greek descendancy, historical and contemporary, from the Museums’ collections. The works outline, from the dawn of the 20th century until today, amongst others, staged portraits and nudes, the representation of the current or historical social and political condition, the snapshot activity with its natural spontaneity, the directorial invention with the fully controlled space.  They incorporate also unusual narratives, visual experimentations, journalistic idioms, metaphors on issues central for the human existence, such as death or the familiar versus the foreign, and the examination of self in the era of me culture. The exhibition closes with a note on tomorrow: the depiction of the post-human through special software and application of artificial intelligence.  A timeline Ever since its official announcement in 1839, photography has been used as a “mirror with memory” of the human existence (Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859), granting it an illusion of immortality in eras of high mortality. The initially conventional personal or group pose, validating identity and describing the figure, was gradually enriched as the medium’s technology evolved, with images more spontaneous, even unknowing. The plethora of photographs with human subjects were recording fragmented and vital elements of the social relations, the customs of an epoch, the working conditions, the major events, personal and collective life, microhistory as well as macrohistory. Through this wealth of images and while crossing all the sweeping social and technological changes, the human seems to have remained at the center of the photographic visibility: from photographic art, photojournalism and social documentary, to fashion, advertisement and most of all photography as memory, this standardized as much as unpredictable category of images flourishing today mainly through the iconographic storm of the social media. And when the human was not markedly present in the frame, very often its traces and the consequences of its actions could be discerned. In this way, photography seems to have assisted, even unintentionally, in the furthering of anthropocentrism in contemporary era rather than its weakening. Curated by: Hercules PapaioannouParticipating photographers: Periklis Alkidis, Costas Balafas, Ilias Bourgiotis, Lizzie Calligas, Olga Deikou, Pavlos Fyssakis, Socratis Iordanidis, Nikos J. Kallianiotis, Natassa Kantemiri, Viktor Koen, Panos Kokkinias, Nikos Koukis, Evangelia Kranioti, Yiannis Konstantinou, Dimitris Letsios, Pepi Loulakaki, Dimitris Michalakis, Katharina Mouratidi, Giorgos Moutafis, Thodoros Nikoleris, Panayotis Papadimitropoulos, Leonidas Papazoglou, Lia Smaragda, Spyros Staveris, Yiannis Stylianou, Katerina Tsakiri, Dimitris Tsoumblekas, Kalliopi Voutzali, Stavros Xiros, Nikoletta Zissi Official Air Carrier  <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_71.png" data-entity-uuid="6814cf19-2564-499d-a51c-318f95963dfc" data-entity-type="file" width="180" class="align-left" height="244" />    Media Sponsors <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_72.png" data-entity-uuid="3555ba7d-1950-4e97-8be0-25271bb4f9ae" data-entity-type="file" width="302" class="align-left" height="175" />

Thessaloniki Museum of Photography

About Humans

The timeless condemnation of war and the power that art has to always express the unspeakable in a revealing way and at the same time to give hope and function as a field of creation and survival in the darkest periods, are just some of the semiotic bases of the exhibition "Universal War. The artistic Avant-garde on the World War I front. Works from the Costakis collection" which is presented from 15 June to 15 October 2025 at MOMus-Museum of Modern Art, at the Moni Lazariston, in Thessaloniki.  On the occasion of the 111th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the exhibition covers the period from 1914 to 1918 and explores how Avant-garde artists in Russia, responded to the greatest war in human history and its escalating outcomes until 1920. The “Great War” was largely perceived as the final act of the Old World. World War I in the Russian Empire, as in the rest of the world, abruptly disrupted the flow of history and caused a rupture in artistic consciousness, especially in the philosophy of the avant-gardists of all forms of art. At the same time, while there were critical concerns and fear over the devastating consequences for life and the economy, artists of that time were seized by a revolutionary mentality that did not fear breaking with the past. Great samples of this artistic renaissance were artistic movements such as Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, the early Constructivism of Tatlin, and its influence on the Dadaists were born; irrational poetic writing and atonal music also developed. From the satirical images of 1914 to the transrational writing of Aleksei Kruchenykh and the non-objective art of Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, and others, and from the mystical writings of Velimir Khlebnikov and Pavel Filonov, aimed at exorcising war, to the tragic figures of amputee soldiers portrayed by Solomon Nikritin, the exhibition emphasizes the apocalyptic nature of the War and conveys strong anti-militarist messages. As an epilogue to the exhibition, the work “Seeing Against Seeing” by the photographer and researcher Alexey Yurenev is presented. It is the result of a dialogue between Ernst Friedrich’s 1924 anti-war manifesto “War Against War!” —in which he compiled graphic photographs of World War I’s aftermath to expose its brutality—along with thousands of portraits from World War II era. AI trained to be fault evoke timeless portraits of war violence and evidence of the psychological terror it causes. Curated by: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Artistic Director, MOMus-Museum of Modern Art- Costakis Collection Assistant Curator: Angeliki Charistou, Art historian, MOMus Curator

Museum of Modern Art

Universal War. Τhe artistic Avant-garde on the World War Ι front. Works from the Costakis collection

The Network of Contemporary Culture Museums of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports introduces itself with its first official project, the digital exhibition under the title "Visualizing humanity", which is now available on the platform <a href="https://res.momus.gr/en/network-of-contemporary-culture-museums">res.momus.gr</a> (CLICK <a href="https://res.momus.gr/en/network-of-contemporary-culture-museums" target="_blank">HERE</a>). The exhibition hosts over 100 works of art by 62 artists from the permanent collections of the organizations participating in the Network -the National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum (EPMAS), the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) and the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus)- and is co-organized and curated by the art historians of all three collaborating institutions.This project attempts to capture not only the global humanitarian and financial crisis that humanity has to face in the Covid-19 era, but also further unprecedented challenges related to growing economic inequalities, uncontrollable culture of fear, arbitrary restrictions on individual human freedoms and job insecurity. These challenges highlight the human rights’ debate as more relevant than ever, 70 years after the signing of the European Declaration of Human Rights.The exhibition "Visualizing humanity" is focusing on the healing power of art that can overcome barriers such as language, culture and politics. Structured in three chapters, each of which includes works by all three participating organizations of the Network, this exhibition attempts to present directly or refer to images of courage and injustice, hope and despair, small or big successes and failures of humans to protect humans.The chapter entitled “Animus Immortalis Est” raises the critical issue of human life’s value and dignity at a time when fundamentalism, fascism, religious extremism and terrorism threaten the humanitarian values ​​on which post-World War II Europe was built.The second chapter, entitled “Feels Like Home”, deals with the concept of “home” both literally and figuratively: globalization has turned millions of people from citizens to immigrants; the right to housing, social security and self-determination is more urgent than ever. What does "home" mean to each of us?Finally, the chapter entitled “Climate Crisis” presents artworks that aim to demonstrate the major issue of climate change and its fatal, irreversible environmental, social and economic effects, already felt worldwide, questioning whether humanity intends and is able to correct its environmental mistakes.ArtistsAlexis Akrithakis, Dimitris Alithinos, Ziant Andar, Dimitris Antonitsis, Thanassis Apartis, Achilleas Apergis, Manolis Baboussis, Chronis Botsoglou, Andrea Bowers, Christina Calbari,  Vlassis Caniaris, Tassos Christakis, Dionysis Christofilogiannis, Daniel (Panagopoulos), Michel François, Alexandros Georgiou, Apostolos Georgiou, Giorgos Gerontidis, Giorgos Gyparakis, Nikolaos Gyzis, Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Georgios Iakovidis, Orestis Kanellis, Vassos Kapandais, Vasso Katraki, Deborah Kelly &amp; Tina Fiveash, Dimosthenis Kokkinidis, Lazaros Lameras, George Lappas, Andreas Lolis, Nikephoros Lytras, René Magritte, Memos (Agamemnon) Makris, Andrea Mantegna, Katerina Marouda, Carlos Motta, Lia Nalbantidou, Freya Najade, Solomon Nikritin, Chryssa Nikoleri, George Osodi, Yiannis Pantelidis, Thodoris Papadakis, Ilias Papailiakis, Leda Papaconstantinou, Rena Papaspyrou, Konstantinos Parthenis, Giannis Parmakelis, Liubov Popova, Jannis Psychopedis, Alexandros Psychoulis, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Omed Salehi, Santiago Sierra, Artemis Skeva, Sotiris Sorongas, Athena Tacha, Tassos (Anastasios Alevizos),Nikos Tranos, Costas Tsoklis, Georgios Vakirtzis, Giorgos Zongolopoulos Network of Contemporary Culture MuseumsThe Network of Contemporary Culture Museums was established on the initiative of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture’s Directorate of Visual Arts, Architecture, Photography and Contemporary Culture Museums; it operates in the form of a collaborative platform with the participation of the supervised (by the Ministry) museum organizations of contemporary culture.The idea was born due to the urgent need of our times -as well as the international museum practice of creating networks of synergies and collaborations- to save resources, find collaborative methods and tools, exchange know-hows and jointly promote the artworks that belong to the public collections of the state.The digital exhibition "Visualizing humanity" is the first official project of the Network for which the National Gallery - Museum of Alexandros Soutsos, the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki altogether. It is a collective digital exhibition in which the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in Greece collaborated, in order to create a digital exhibition of an international character that functions as a major presentation of their permanent collections.

MOMus

Visualizing humanity: the first project by the Network of Contemporary Culture Museums of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports

Exhibition: “Divided Memories: 1940-1950. Between History and Experience”<a href="http://www.dividedmemories.de/">www.dividedmemories.de</a> “Divided Memories: 1940-1950. Between History and Experience”, the exhibition that had deeply moved audiences during its original run (December 2016-April 2017) in Thessaloniki at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, is now digital. The exhibition sheds light on the 1940s through records documenting the personal experiences of artists and intellectuals. Artworks, narratives and testimonies, documents, literary works, poetry, and historical texts dating to that momentous decade transform the pain, despair and hardships, and evoke creative and existential impasses, contradictions and hopes, reshaping official History.It also examines the presence of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki since the 1930s, presents new evidence recording developments in the city during the German occupation and chronicling the deportation of the city’s Jews to Nazi extermination camps, as well as photographs of survivors and interviews with Thessaloniki Jews born after 1941.The new, digital form of the exhibition was organized by the Goethe Institut Thessaloniki, the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki and the NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln (Documentation Center for National Socialism, City of Cologne). Although consisting of fewer (now digitized) exhibits, artworks and documents compared to the physical exhibition that had taken place in Thessaloniki in 2016, it remains a dense and historically important Greek presentation at the initiative of Thessaloniki and its institutions, presented this time on German soil.The artistic part of the exhibition is organized into two sections: the first section starts with the Greek Epic of 1940 and presents life and death in the time of the German Occupation, with references, among others, to hunger and the black market, to the Resistance in Thessaloniki and across Greece –exemplified by the compulsory art exhibition of 1942 and the funeral of poet Kostis Palamas–, the mass executions and the criminal German retaliations.The exhibits that comprise the second section relate to the transition to national liberation, the participation of artists in the Mountain Government of 1944, the Liberation of Athens and Greece, before moving on to the Dekemvriana (“December Events”) of 1944, the voyage of the “Mataroa” and the honorary donation by French artists and intellectuals to the Greek people as a “tribute” to the Greek Resistance. Finally, they relate to the Civil War, the rejection of national division by artists, and the exiles, imprisonments, torture, and executions. The exhibition concludes with a list of Greeks bestowed with the honorific “Righteous Among the Nations”, and with the post-war proposal to recognize the Greek Resistance as the foundation of Europe and civilization.The part dedicated to the Jewish community is also divided into two sections. The first one focuses on the social and political problems faced by this community, while the second one presents the process by which the occupying forces came to control, expropriate and ultimately displace the Jewish population to Auschwitz.This is a reflective curatorial effort that revisits the issues of the war’s declaration, the Battle of Pindus, the German invasion and occupation, the Resistance in Greek cities and mountains, the massacres of civilians, the Holocaust, National Liberation, and the political crisis that would lead to the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). This is done from the perspective of the artists' experiences, their dilemmas and attitudes as intellectuals facing in solidarity with the rest of the population a major political, social and, ultimately, humanitarian crisis.The exhibition is implemented with the financial support of the ‘Hellenic-German Fund for the Future’ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany.Τhe accompanying bilingual (Greek-German) catalogue reflects the exhibition that was organized and presented in 2016-2017. [Starting point of the exhibition]The first version of the exhibition, when the original works and documents were presented in Thessaloniki in 2016, had been an initiative of the Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki and was co-organized with the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki and Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum.It was guided by the various manifestations of cultural and artistic reality in the time of the German Occupation, the Greek Resistance, the 1944 Liberation and the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). That exhibition had juxtaposed the narratives discovered in the works of intellectuals and artists with the dominant ideological representations, while also highlighting issues of historical importance that remain largely unsettled, such as the transformation of Greek society which entailed the fate of Thessaloniki’s Jewish Community.The contribution of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in the exhibits covered a wide range of works (paintings, sketches, photographs, sculptures, posters, political cartoons, videos, films, albums), documents (private and public archival material, publications, objects, letters, film documentaries) and forms of expression (e.g. literary texts), both as testimonies and forms of direct participation and as narratives that had changed across time. In doing so, the exhibition had attempted to shed some light on the issue of memory, also in relation to European reality. By focusing on the complexity of history and the differentiation of experiences, the exhibition confronted both the emotional dimension of human experiences and the cold typology of ideologies. The exhibition aspired to communicate emotions and experiences that transform the understandings of that specific period and specific society of audience members who might be unfamiliar with the era and its history.The exhibits from the 1940s were a deeply personal human scream, as a reaction not only to the horrors of war and civil strife, but also to the miracles of nature and life. The stance taken by artists and intellectuals, without sparing the conqueror, the torturer and usurper, and without ever succumbing to the vulgarity that was omnipresent throughout that decade, kept open a window of light amidst the darkness, remaining generously accessible to every discourse, in an effort to purge the prevailing hatred, intolerance and death.The Exiles, the imprisonments and executions, the Resistance, did not prevent them from rejecting war and violence or from maintaining open channels of communication despite their many differences. In the period’s periodicals and publications, in its theatre and intellectual gatherings, one sees the boldest, most humane, and most inventive forms of resistance – not only as political action, but mostly as a life stance and as a primary condition of doing art.Part of the research was focused on Thessaloniki, the city’s unique geopolitical position and the cosmopolitanism of its pre-war society, economy and history that was tragically transformed by the Holocaust of its Jewish community.The contribution of the Jewish Museum included unpublished historical records (documents, photographs, testimonies) dating as early as the 1930s. The records related to the demographical and geographical changes that influenced Thessaloniki’s Jewish population; local antisemitism; the electoral and political behaviour of the Jewish population; and to Jewish business and construction activity. New records were also presented that regarded developments in Thessaloniki at the time of the German occupation. They demonstrated the higher mortality rate among Jews at the time of the famine, the control of the Jewish Community by German authorities, local collaborationism, the destruction of the Jewish cemetery, the forced labour imposed on Jews and the ransom paid to buy it off. Other records presented a timeline of the displacement of Thessaloniki’s Jews to Nazi extermination camps, the demarcation of ghettos, the Baron Hirsch transit camp, the looting of Jewish properties, as well as the “erasing” of Jews from local records. They also included photographs of survivors and interviews with Thessaloniki Jews born after 1941. [Exhibition] Exhibition InitiativeGoethe-Institut Thessaloniki CoorganisersMOMus-Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Jüdisches Museum Thessaloniki, NS-Dokumentationszentrum der Stadt Köln Goethe-Institut ThessalonikiProject managersPeter Panes, Beate Köhler CoordinationAris Kalogiros TranslationsRenate Lenger-SidiropoulouDoris WilleGeorgios KefalidisKaiti Stefanaki German texts editing Doris Wille MOMus-Museum of Contemporary ArtCuratorsDenys Zacharopoulos, Thouli Misirloglou Research assistants Eleni BasdekiMiguel Fernández Belmonte Scientific Consultant Loukianos Chasiotis, Assistant Professor Modern &amp; Contemporary History, AUTh Works’ use permits | Contacts Katerina Syroglou Accountants’Dora KaipiAreti KaravassiliMari PournouHaris Theodoridis Creative Direction | Digital exhibition design | Digital material MALVI Exhibition graphic design MALVIPanagiotis MetallinosPantelis Toutounopoulos Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki CuratorsEvangelos Chekimoglou, Lucy Nachmia Assistant curatorsPauline SchwankeIliana ErreraMyriam Sedikario Scientific consultants Anastasia ValavanidouZanet BattinouErika Perahia Artistic curatorshipHyBrazil NS-Dokumentationszentrum of the City of Cologne CoordinationRobert Muschalla Programming and Interface-Design | Databank and Editorial StaffChristine Bolz, Redaktionsbüro Dank <a href="http://www.dividedmemories.de/">www.dividedmemories.de</a> Additional information can be found here:<a href="http://www.goethe.de/thessaloniki">www.goethe.de/thessaloniki</a><a href="http://www.momus.gr/">www.momus.gr</a><cite><a href="http://www.jmth.gr%0D/">www.jmth.gr</a></cite><a href="http://www.nsdok.de/">www.nsdok.de</a>

Divided Memories 1940-1950. Between History and Experience

The permanent exhibition of the works of the Iola donation is presented on three levels in the wing completed in 1997 as part of the program of the European Capital of Culture Organization "Thessaloniki '97". 47 emblematic works by Greek and international artists are included in the donation and are the personal choices of the benefactor-donor Alexandros Iolas (1908-1987), with the aim of contributing to the establishment of a Contemporary Art Center. The collector and patron of contemporary art was active in the art world in the 1950s-1980s internationally. His collection included numerous works of art, both ancient and modern.With a constant love for the work of art as an object, Iolas maintained his undiminished interest in the artistic endeavors after the war, when the overall goal was to create a new visual and cultural reality. He helped promote artists around the world and was instrumental in establishing the surrealists in America. His exhibition activity peaked in the 1960s and 1970s in art galleries and institutions in the artistic metropolises.On each level of the exhibition space, a different narrative unit develops that highlights the donor's relationship with famous artists, from Victor Brauner to Kostas Tsoklis, from Alexis Akrithakis to Giorgos Lazogas and Pavlos, from Niki de Phalle to Jean Tinguely, from from Dennis Oppenheim to Andy Warhol, from Elisseo Mattiaci to Pino Pascali, from Novello Finotti to Herbert List and Takis, the path that Iolas traveled in the artistic space, not only reflects subjective preferences, but also a sharp gaze, constantly open to artistic expression.The architectural plans of the three-story building unit are a donation of Xanthi Scarpia-Heupel of the office "Jonos, Heupel, Heupel". During construction, archaeological findings were uncovered and part of a road has been saved and preserved at ground level. Alexandros Xydis (1917-2004) is an important figure of the Greek post-war cultural reality: diplomat, critic and art historian, he was widely active in the artistic field both with his systematic art criticism, his presence in the society of Greek Art Critics and the international Association of Art Critics, as well as with the organization of exhibitions, as a member of the committee of Greek Art exhibitions abroad at the Ministry of Education initially(1963-1966) and later of the Ministry of Culture (1981-1982).His collection, formed around 60 years, is, among other things, the result of the spiritual ties he developed with artists, as well as the collaboration of his wife, Dorothea Xydis.The donation of 210 works from the collection of Alexandros and Dorothea Xydis to the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCT) in 1999 was the result of a long-term relationship with the institution since its early years. These works today are part of the concession that the MMCT advanced to, the Metropolitan Organization of Visual Arts Museums of Thessaloniki (MOMus). Achilleas Aperghis (1909-1986) was one of the most important artists in the history of Greek sculpture, who pioneered and contributed substantially to the foundation of abstraction. From the late 1950s he presented his work in group and solo exhibitions in Europe, representing Greece at international exhibitions and attracting public interest and criticism. His particular contribution to abstraction is recognized in the peculiarity of his plastic language, which is achieved after a long and painful experimentation with the materials. The titles he gave o his works, such as Birds, Revival, Flight, etc., refer to nature and natural phenomena, suggesting his interest in the plastic performance of movement and change. The donation of Aperghis’ work at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in 2002 by his son, Yorgos Aperghis, enriched the Museum’s collections and gave an extensive picture of the work of this important artist. These works, as well as the rest of the MMCA collection, after the merger of the foundation with the State Museum of Contemporary Art in November 2018, are currently managed by the Metropolitan Organization of Fine Arts Museums of Thessaloniki (MOMus).

Donation of Iolas, Xydis and Aperghis

The truth, the power, the sensitivity and the poetics of Alex Mylonas' art are some of the elements highlighted in the permanent exhibition at MOMus-Museum Alex Mylona in Athens. The sculptures, watercolors and drawings of Alex Mylona reflect a common thread which runs through the entire work of Alex Mylona: from the anthropocentric compositions she created in the 1950s, to the formality, austere stillness, coarseness and sharp ends, the game of lines, empty forms and vertical surfaces characterising her abstract wrought iron sculptures presented at the 1960 Venice Biennale; and from the twists and turns, the curves, the movements and tensions of the malleable sheet metal in Architectural Propositions (1976), to the exceptionally simplicity of sculptural form and the purity of geometrical marble surfaces with the joining of circles and semicircles, squares or rectangles. Two emblematic works in marble from 1998, Kouros and Kore, appear to "close the circle" (her words), summarising her varied and multidimensional life both as a person and as an artist. The art of Alex Mylona succeeds in transmuting emotion and moulding its vital relationship with the world; in touching the secret of existence, birth and death, motherhood and love; in combining the myths of the ancient Greek world - the birth of Aphrodite, the Minotaur and Medea - with the spirituality of Byzantium, to seek out the balances, to reflect on the nature and potential of plastic art, to suggest a new arrangement of space and surface, of rhythm and volumes, of positivity and negativity, of emptiness and wholeness, of materiality and form. Alex Mylona was born in Athens in 1920. Her parents recognised her artistic talent early, offering her the opportunity of taking painting lessons at the age of eight. In 1940 she married politician Georgios Mylonas. In 1943 their first daughter, Maria, was born, followed in 1944 by their second daughter, Eleni. In 1945 she was admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts, studying under sculptor Michael Tombros. In 1949 she gave birth to her third child, Alexandros. After finishing her studies, Alex Mylona devoted herself wholeheartedly to art, participating in several group exhibitions. In 1960 she represented Greece at the Venice Biennale, her sculptures drawing the enthusiastic support of art critic Herbert Read. In the 1960s she took part in several important Biennales and other international exhibitions in Alexandria, Paris, Montreal, Brussels, Buenos Aires and Budapest. During that period she also kept a workshop in Paris, located near Montparnasse. In 1980 she moved her workshop to the district of Le Marais. Living in the French capital she had the chance of meeting important sculptors, such as H. Arp, A. Giacometti and O. Zadkine, and painters like J. Atlan. Her solo exhibitions denote and reflect the different stages of her artistic and personal development. The 1961 "Parnassus" exhibition was a retrospective dominated by compositions originally exhibited in Venice. In 1976, at the "Polyplano" art gallery, she presented her projects on volume and void, while in 1984, at the Athens Art Gallery (and later, in 1988, at the Parisian gallery "Denise René"), she presented her investigations on the archetypal forms of the circle and the square expressed on marble. In 1986, the National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens hosted a large retrospective of her work. In addition to sculpture, Alex Mylona created several works on paper, was involved in painting and designed sets and costumes for performances by Rallou Manou's Hellenic Horeodrama group. Mylona's creative work was in step with contemporaneous modern and progressive art movements, while also highlighting her Greek descent and the international dimension of her compositions. In her later years, she founded the Alex Mylona Museum, looking for a permanent, public home for her works and for a place that would always welcome the works of young aspiring artists. Credits © Eleni Mylonas 1976 All rights reserved

Permanent Exhibition Museum Alx Mylona

The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, with its ninth edition, is embarking on a new approach to the institution, reconfiguring itself both spatially and conceptually. It explores the pervasive demand for an ”otherwise” that appears to define life and art both locally and globally, while also delving into the perception, content, necessity, and significance of “change” in general–both in the present moment, but also in connection with key relevant moments of the past.  With its intriguingly ambiguous title, “everything must change. RIS9”, curated by independent curator and art historian Nadja Argyropoulou, the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art aims to connect life and art in unexpected ways—through humour, ingenuity, and a spirit of joyful militancy that remains non-didactic yet alternatively pedagogical. The Biennale seeks to highlight works that critically engage with the present and help shape the future, all while actively envisioning a world of many worlds.  “everything must change. RIS9”In exploring the proposition of “everything must change”, the exhibition confronts the excitement, awe, and even the fear caused by the urgent Now shaped by Artificial Intelligence. It attempts, however, a deeper and less banal approach to intelligence by looking into the revolutionary, multi-layered thinking that resides beyond the trite evocation of technological thauma – trauma binary. The “Radical Intelligence” referenced in the “RI” of the title is paired with “S9,” a shorthand evoking a popular, older alternative name of Thessaloniki (Saloniki), thereby inserting in the Biennale’s title a direction and an invocation. This dynamic movement, towards the city and broadcast from it, reflects an ambition to foster a sense of togetherness—however temporarily— with Thessaloniki’s spaces and symbols.  Biennale 9 features works by international artists, with a significant proportion of the exhibits comprising new digital and non-digital works commissioned specifically for this edition by MOMus in keeping with the curator’s rationale and overall plan. Diverse social, artistic, and scientific groups and individuals are participating, while the Biennale’s identity, venues, actions, communications, and collaborations are all designed to reflect and engage with the questions raised by its title and content.  Under this curatorial vision, and in collaboration with the Biennale’s management, two primary venues have been selected to host the exhibition. Emphasis was placed on their contrasts and dialogue, which co-create a crucial symbolic liminal space: <ul><li>Venues within the Thessaloniki International Fair–Helexpo, specifically Pavilions 2 &amp; 3, and MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art. These sites highlight the Fair’s historical significance and multifaceted function, particularly its ties to Greece’s economic model and broader socio-economic imaginaries and rituals. Moreover, the complex’s ongoing transition makes it currently a focal point for debates and competing visions for the city’s public space, touching on the very future of urban life in Thessaloniki. </li><li>The unique Kalochori Lagoon on Thessaloniki’s western outskirts. This is a landscape that has been shaped by refugee communities, industrial growth, and the gradual emergence of a wetland since the mid-1960s – a result of land subsidence, groundwater depletion, and the mixing of river and sea waters. Now part of the <a href="https://axiosdelta.gr/en/national-park/protected-area/kalochori-lagoon/">Axios Delta National Park</a>, the lagoon is rich in rare biodiversity, hosting both old and new species, human and non-human activity, generating narratives that powerfully demonstrate the value of symbiotic living. </li><li>Additional venues include the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Warehouse B1, Pier A’, Port of Thessaloniki) that will host an exhibition featuring works from this year’s Biennale that engage in dialogue with the central theme of the 66th edition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival– highlighting a curatorial collaboration between Biennale 9 and the Festival (this exhibition will run from 30 October to 16 November 2025). </li></ul> Nadja Argyropoulou, curator of the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, notes: “What are the things that “must change”? How, when, by whom, and with whom? Might the “sustainable dismantling” of institutions, practices, and rituals that confine and alienate us be just as vital as the sustainable growth of everything that heals and unites us? Why is it easier to envision the end of the world rather than imagine the emergence of a world of many worlds, the possibility of differentiation without separation, as invoked by poets and quantum physicists alike? What is the rebellious ground of response-ability, engagement, and witnessing that might give rise to genuine change? How does art participate in this change if not by powerfully drawing us towards the animating force of communal life?  Biennale 9 echoes a common(place) yet recurrent, urgent, and fragile, plural and widely co-opted demand / slogan. It simultaneously subjects this slogan to the rigours of critique or better stated, to the practice of attending to what is emerging, to the care of witnessing, interpretation, accountability to the precision required in order for a change fair for all to be imagined and realized. Through its works and overall character the exhibition points at the ways that the same phrase can be wielded by social revolutionaries and techno-fascists alike, by persecuted activists and authoritarian demagogues, by rival social classes and diametrically opposed collective forms of expression. In other words, it asks: amidst a world that often feels suffocatingly predetermined, compliant, entrenched, un-free, possessed, how can we reclaim the right to wander into complexity, the right to refuse, the joy of resistance, the choice of life over mere survival? What is the radical intelligence that ever, persistently creates everyday routes of escape to the insurgent ground of love? A central inspiration is the rather untranslatable concept of “waywardness”, articulated by theorist and writer Saidiya Hartman in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, where Hartman reconstructs the “terrible beauty” of oppressed and marginalised black lives in early 20th-century New York. As she writes, “A revolution in a minor key unfolded in the city and young black women were the vehicle”, while forms of solidarity and love emerged outside conventions and the law. As writer and academic Fred Moten remarks today, ‘We have to recognise that our struggle for liberation is given in the language of liberalism.’ How can a language, so brutally co-opted by genocidal, colonial capitalism, by an economy built on distraction and spectacle, remain vital and vibrant, active and transformative, accurate in its references and origins, yet not authoritarian and exclusionary? How can it still articulate the para—the alongside and beyond—that we inhabit and connect us with the alternative politics of pleasure, the mourning of loss, earlier and current struggles for social equality and justice, degrowth and environmentally engaged cosmopolitics, queer practices of care, Indigenous traditions and anti-colonial movements, eco-social alliances, and their solidarity-based agendas? How might it empower the proverbial canary in the coal mine? How can it inspire (without manipulating) desire to not settle for the proper and the proposed of thanatopolitics? Through the visual frequency of the works displayed, the dialogues, the contradictions and entanglements, the exhibition is above all committed to explore kinships within the practice of thinking and highlight the possibility of radical change and emancipatory pluralism. It champions forms of collective action, vigilance and radical sympoietics that avoid the homogenizing silencing of contradictions and paradoxes, while emphasizing the realisation of free thought, the importance of small-scale stories of everyday disobedience, resistance, love, escape, and poetry that change the world from below and within. Embracing “the aesthetics of bewilderment”, which fuses pleasure and questioning, frictions and fictions, clarity and blur, sensory participation and distancing – Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “critical fabulation”- the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art breathes an air alive with the possibility of undeterred assembly, unruly gathering, aesthetic sociality.”  Under the direction of Thouli Misirloglou, the Artistic Director of MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, which is the implementing institution of the event, the Biennale is co-organised with TIF-Helexpo, in partnership with the Municipality of Thessaloniki and the Thessaloniki Film Festival.  Details about more creative collaborations, partnerships, and venues will be announced in September 2025, along with the full list of participating artists and the full exhibition programme. The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is co-financed by the European Union (NSRF – “Central Macedonia” Operational Programme).  Curator: Nadja ArgyropoulouDirector: Thouli MisirloglouOrganizer: MOMus – Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of ThessalonikiImplementation: MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art CollectionsCo-organizer: TIF-HelexpoPartners: Municipality of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Film Festival The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is co-financed by the European Union (NSRF – “Central Macedonia” Operational Programme). Opening: 31 October 2025Preview and Opening Events: 30, 31 October &amp; 1 November 2025Venues: Pavilions 2 &amp; 3 (TIF-Helexpo), MOMus–Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMus–Experimental Center for the Arts, Kalochori Delta Visual Identity: studio precarityArchitectural Design: Y2K ArchitectsCurator’s Assistant: Evelyn Zempou Nadja Argyropoulou short BioNadja Argyropoulou is an independent curator, art historian and writer based in Athens. She is a researcher on ecocritical practices and networks, forms of de-growth, engagements of art with science, technology and alternative fields of knowledge and action. She has written texts on contemporary art in books, art catalogues and the press. She is a founding member of the artistic/research-scientific collective Saprofyta, of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and of IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art).She speaks English, French and Italian. <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_76.png" data-entity-uuid="a39524d7-1a3b-4b8f-8ee0-87964ea0e797" data-entity-type="file" width="433" height="62" />ORGANIZER<img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_77.png" data-entity-uuid="63433b4e-3f25-4ac2-8d84-9da5ed282b0e" data-entity-type="file" width="229" class="align-left" height="115" />  CO-ORGANIZER<img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_78.png" data-entity-uuid="24038c9d-fe27-4f8a-9b33-2c30d0064f3a" data-entity-type="file" width="481" class="align-left" height="128" />   CO-ORGANIZER<img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_75.png" data-entity-uuid="5cf99f1a-068d-499b-ab85-157f6d0ee1f0" data-entity-type="file" width="184" height="105" />PARTNERS <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_79.png" data-entity-uuid="e67bbb98-f098-4de5-a20f-bdc318bc6679" data-entity-type="file" width="250" height="330" />

everything must change | Radical Intelligence. Saloniki 9

Opening: Thursday 27 March, 19:00 The paintings and sculptural compositions of Dimitris Fragakis, featuring swimmers, which are presented in the exhibition alongside other works of his, form a major body of his work. The atmosphere in these compositions is grotesque, dark, and timeless, with strong and extreme distortions, unnatural and exaggerated scales, while the surreal, otherworldly element takes center stage as the figures emerge and submerge, float, brace themselves or take the great "plunge" into the water, the liquid element. Or perhaps not just into water, but into the uncharted depths of existence, where they confront both terror and ecstatic wonder as they face the unknown. Through his compositions, Dimitris Fragakis reaffirms the quality of pure artistic values that define his work, heightens the symbolic power of his imagery in a fragmented, alienated and homogenizing era, and asserts his vital relationship with the world, raising existential and ontological questions, invoking a deeper form of communication. The great "dive" has begun: A plunge into the world, into life, into the unknown. Dimitris Fragakis' exhibition is the first exhibition hosted at Case Studio, in the rotunda of MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art. Case Studio is the latest initiative of the museum: an exhibition space dedicated to presenting the here-and-now of contemporary art. Its goal is showcasing both emerging and established artists, while fostering a closer connection between the museum and contemporary creative practices. Featuring solo exhibitions and projects by contemporary artists ‒primarily, though not exclusively‒, by creators who are based in or originating from Thessaloniki alongside a variety of collective projects, Case Studio highlights alternative narratives and innovative models of knowledge production, promoting the values of social progress and empowerment. Curated by: Yannis Bolis, Art Historian, MOMus Curator  Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1982, Dimitris Fragakis graduated in 2006 from the School of Engineering Sciences at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Kavala. He studied at the School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Faculty of Fine Arts of AUTh in Thessaloniki, graduating in 2014. Since 2024, he has been teaching painting as a Scientific Associate in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Western Macedonia in Florina, Greece. SPLats, presented at the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, is his 5th solo exhibition. He has participated in international and group exhibitions at several Museums, Art Institutions, and art spaces, including: the 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art (State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki), the 58th International Film Festival of Thessaloniki, the MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, Crux Galerie (Athens), Kalfayan Galleries (Athens Thessaloniki), the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation of AUTh (Thessaloniki), Art Athina (Zappeion Megaron, Athens), Space 52 (Athens), Apodec (Thessaloniki), KYAN Project Space (Athens), the Athens Conservatoire, Frissiras Museum (Athens), and Action Field Kodra (Thessaloniki). He currently lives and works between Thessaloniki and Athens.

Case Studio #1: Dimitris Fragakis. SPLats

Opening: Friday 11 April 2025, 20:00 The longing, the violent expatriation and the demand for return, while they should have been placed as issues in the past, they are paradoxically becoming increasingly topical. This year’s Inspire Project 2025 which is hosted in MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art (TIF-Helexpo premises), from 11 April until 1 June 2025, revolves around the theme of the Return, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Turkish invasion in Cyprus in 1974. It extends, however, to the intergenerational trauma of 'longing', of lost homeland and home, of forced displacement and migration, but also to the futuristic imagination around what has been lost but is constantly sought.  Works of art made during this year’s workshop by 20 young artists, who worked with the honoured artist Nikos Chalarambidis, are based on the notion of the “Return”. The new works are exhibited alongside Charalambidis’ own retrospective works, which stand as the main chapter of the Inspire Project 2025 under the title “If you graze sheep, why don’t you play the flute?”. Through unexpected combinations of different themes and experiences of the globalised world, such as the alteration of cultural identity and the questioning of nationality, the post-colonial legacy, the modernist past, the transformations of refugeeism, the conceptual axis of home and homeland is illuminated.  Through the prism of the Cyprus issue, in the space of half a century, the demand for 'return' to ancestral homes has not only not been vindicated, but has become the demand of thousands of other people in areas that continue even today to be subjected to the suffering of bloody warfare. Love for one's homeland and nostalgia for it seem to be defining emotions from antiquity to the present day. The relevant considerations constitute the trigger for a broader public discussion, while also functioning as the basis for the joint artwork that will emerge in the venue by the participating artists in collaboration with Nikos Charalambidis. The Inspire Project is co-funded by the European Union (NSRF - Central Macedonia Programme). Artistic director: Thouli MisirloglouCurated by: Theodore Markoglou, Katerina SyroglouProduction assistant: Silia FasianouCommittee for the selection of the workshop participants: Areti Leopoulou, Theodore Markoglou, Katerina Syroglou, MOMus curatorsInvited artist: Nikos Charalambidis Participating artists: Anna Botou, Vasso Chatzimanoli, Christina Chatzimichailidou, Stavros Christofi (Yeti), Despoina Douzi, Sarkis Hambaryan, Christos Hatzichristofi, Rena Kaklamani, Konstantinos Kalathakis, Zoe Kalogianni, Xenia Kasapoglou, Konstantinos Konstantinou, Nikos Larios, Georgios Othonas, Eleni Pasiata, Sophia Pechlivanidou, Olga Souvermezoglou, Daphne Vlasidou, Konstantinos Xanthis, Stefanos Zafeiriou Invited artist’s bioNikos Charalambidis is a visual artist and Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He ranks among the most important visual artists of the 90's generation, with extensive international activity and acclaim. According to the rationale of his award in 2007, by the Association of Art critics AICA HELLAS, he is considered the main exponent of Political Art in Greece, while the influence of his work has been decisive in establishing a new generation of artists more sensitive to socio-political issues.  His multifaceted research work is distinguished from very early on, with the 1st Prize of the Yannis &amp; Zoe Spyropoulou Foundation being awarded to him in 1992, even before he had completed his studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts, thus setting the starting signal for an upward course that is today the subject of academic study and doctoral dissertations, as well as a key reference point for art theorists and historians. Already since the late 1980s, the artist's daring interventions on the Green Line in Cyprus, his homeland, but also in war zones of other countries, even endangering his life, go beyond the dominant artistic trends of the time. Charalambidis establishes a primary, radical artistic activity that deals with a wide range of socio-political themes, adopting unprecedented artistic practices. At the same time, he enlists innovative digital tools of robotics and other cutting-edge technology, developing interdisciplinary methodologies and collaborations with researchers of various disciplines. The examination of archives relating to the troubled space of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East is at the core of his research, focusing on the political problem of Cyprus. Forced expatriation and refugeeism, the legacy of colonialism and its effects, migration and nomadism, national identity and its contestation, localness and "non-place", even the colonization of space and its exploitation strategies, are issues that first appear in the artist's early work, which would, decades later, become common themes for many artists. The "iconic renegade of the Green Line", as Henry Meyric Hughes, President of the International Association of Art critics, calls Charalambidis in his extensive theoretical essay on his solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2003, has been curated by other internationally distinguished curators and art historians, more than 65 solo exhibitions in international art centres and exhibition spaces, institutional events and biennales, as well as in leading museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, France, Centre Pompidou, Turner Contemporary in London, Palazzo Querrini Stampalia and Palazzo Giustinian Lolin Querini in Venice, Pavilion Ciccillo Matarazzo in São Paulo, Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia, Musée des Archives Nationales in Paris, etc.<img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_31.jpeg" data-entity-uuid="10e128e0-0a75-4141-8a28-a2ef214e8127" data-entity-type="file" width="453" height="64" />Official Air Carrier <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_33.jpeg" data-entity-uuid="113e8b86-8f74-4091-b97c-bdf7ca47c365" data-entity-type="file" width="163" height="156" />Media Sponsors <img src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/image_32.jpeg" data-entity-uuid="ecd11a96-b020-4f7a-9607-cdfec5bda77b" data-entity-type="file" width="254" height="112" />

INSPIRE PROJECT 2025: THE RETURN

Works of art from the famous Costakis collection of the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art "travelled" to Potsdam in Germany, to the Barberini Museum for the exhibition "Kandinsky's Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century", as part of the museum's collaboration, exchanges and networking with museums and educational institutions abroad. Masterpieces of the Russian Avant-Garde, such as Ilya Chashnik's Suprematist Cross (1923), Liubov Popova's Painterly Architectonics (1918) and the two Space Force Constructions (1920-1921), Ivan Kliun's Spherical Non-Objective Composition (1922-1925) and Red Light (1923), Aleksandr Rodchenko's Linearism (1920) and Boris Ender's Abstract Composition (1919-20) are presented alongside other famous works from museums and collections abroad, creating an ideal context for presenting the contribution of Wassily Kandisnky's work and the imprints of the Geometric Abstraction movement in Europe and the USA. More information, here: <a href="https://www.museum-barberini.de/en/ausstellungen/17400/kandinsky-s-universe-geometric-abstraction-in-the-20th-century">https://www.museum-barberini.de/en/ausstellungen/17400/kandinsky-s-universe-geometric-abstraction-in-the-20th-century</a>

Loan works in the exhibition «Kandinsky's Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century» 

Exhibition extension: Until Sunday 18 May 2025. Presentation of the two-volume illustrated encyclopedic dictionary “A. F. Vettas. Scenes. Notes on the Art and Technique of Scenography” | Thursday 30 January 2025, 18:00-20:30 The technique of scenography "takes the lead" in the exhibition entitled "Scenes made of paper" as well as in the two-volume illustrated encyclopedic dictionary of Apostolos Fokion Vettas, emeritus professor of scenography at the Drama School of the Faculty of Arts of AUTh, and in the end it becomes clear that it was the main protagonist and love of the same, during his life. The inter-artistic dimension of scenography (theater, speech, movement, visual arts, sound, architecture) as well as the possibilities arising from every form of applied art compose a special, new, malleable, constructivist backdrop in the exhibition in question, in MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki, from 30 January until 23 March 2025. Children and adults can intervene with special lighting techniques in the already existing scenery in the space and bring them to life in any way they wish. The exhibition of models and paper-sculptures functions as an ideal setting for the presentation of the two-volume illustrated encyclopedic dictionary of scenography, stage architecture and theater technology entitled "A. F. Vettas. Scenes. Notes on the Art and Technique of Scenography", a high educational contribution of the author, published by MOMus under his supervision and with the support of the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation. The presentation event will take place on Thursday 30 January 2025 at MOMus-Museum of Modern Art, 18:00-20:30. Speakers will be: Apostolos Vettas, emeritus professor of scenography, School of Drama, Faculty of Arts, AUTh, Petros Martinidis, emeritus professor of architectural theory and criticism, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering and writer, Platon Mavromoustakos, professor of 20th century theater history, School of Drama, Faculty of Arts, AUTh, Lois Papadopoulos, emeritus professor of architecture, Department of Architecture, School of Engineering, University of Thessaly.  There will be an opening speech by Eleni Doundoulaki, General Secretary of Contemporary Culture, Dr. of theatre studies. Maria Tsantsanoglou, the artistic director of MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection, will coordinate the event. The talks will be in Greek, without translation in English. The dictionary is written in Greek. It is written in a simple way, so that it also functions as a teaching aid for young people who want to get involved in the theater.The edition is available in all MOMus art shops.  Biography Apostolos Fokion Vettas was born in Athens in 1945. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki and did postgraduate studies in Edinburgh, Scotland (College of Art, School of Architecture, Herriot-Watt University). He lives and works in Thessaloniki. He is Emeritus Professor of scenography in the School of Drama of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh). As an architect, he deals with issues related to the view of the theater space, its technical characteristics, form and function. Since 1981 he has collaborated as a scenographer with theater organizations and theater troupes in Greece and abroad. His scenographic works have been presented at the festivals of Epidaurus, Athens, Dimitria, etc. He has collaborated with the National Theatre, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Greek National Opera. He has collaborated with the Municipal and Regional Theatres of Kalamata, Patras, Larissa, Volos, Kavala and Veria, with the Greek Art Theatre Karolos Koun, the Experimental Art Theater in Thessaloniki and other troupes in the region as well as with private troupes in Athens. In 2003 he was the curator of the Greek participation in the Prague Quadrennial for Scenography, which received a special honor "for the quality of the presentation". For his work, he received several distinctions both in Greece and abroad. For his overall work, he was honored by the study and research center of the Hellenic Theatre and the Theatre Museum with the Panos Aravantinos prize. He has at times served as President of the National Theatre of Northern Greece (1995-97), of the School of Drama of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the AUTh (1997-99 and 2003-05), Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the AUTh (2000-03), and President of the School of Film (2006-07). He was a member of the Advisory Committees of the Greek Ministry of Culture on grants for the independent theater. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Center for Theater and Dance, involved in the operation of the Municipal and Regional Theatres.

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