Date: 12.10–26.11.2023
Location: EMΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
The result of the first EMST Open Call to Greek curators and curatorial teams
Participating artists: Chryssa, Bia Davou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Karolina Krasouli, Christina Mitrentse, Nausica Pastra, Phantom Investigations (Giannis Delagrammatikas, Ino Varvariti), and Maria Varela
Symbiotics presented a contemporary narrative on coexistence, which focused on the process of communication through female art practices, defined the conceptual core of the project, which comprised a group exhibition, framed by a broad programme of public events.
The exhibition presented works by four contemporary Greek visual artists – Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Karolina Krasouli, Christina Mitrentse, and Maria Varela – as well as by the artist group Phantom Investigations (Giannis Delagrammatikas and Ino Varvariti). Compositions by Chryssa, Bia Davou, and Nausica Pastra, from the EMΣT collection, completed the exhibition, whose starting point was the series of drawings Serial Structures 2 – Odyssey by Bia Davou. The Symbiotic Discourses of the public programme included workshops and educational events (by Karolina Krasouli, Christina Mitrentse, and Maria Varela), performances (by Chrysanthi Koumianaki), and a performative lecture (by Phantom Investigations). Aside from adding a transformative and synergistic dimension and content to the exhibition, the programme aspired to interact and communicate with the audience.
The use of the grid as a common structural component of the works in the exhibition functioned in a unifying manner, defining a literal, or even an imaginary, space within which the concepts of equilibrium, seriality, repetition, succession and – potentially – liberation and expansion into the real and the public space, were dynamically imposed. The grid, in addition, was connected to weaving – an activity that has been traditionally linked to the place and role of women. Weaving was here elevated as a fine art practice, turning the process of handicraft into a tool of empowerment of the female in contemporary art and connecting it to different versions of the visual, textual, scientific, and technological language. This medium is common in the practice of the visual artists taking part in the exhibition, heightening the symbiotic and conceptual system of their coexistence. At the same time, they share features such as the reuse of motifs and symbols (also) from their earlier works, which are inherent in and converse with their subsequent proposals.
Emphasising the process of creation through fragmentary images and codes, using a broad range of art mediums, the works presented in the Symbiotics exhibition created space and rhythm, became poetic gestures and contemplations on contemporary reality and the history of art itself, and wove their own narrative on women in art, “in a room of one’s own” (Virginia Woolf).
Exhibition Brochure
Video