After the successful participation of the organization in Art Athina 2020, PCAI is happy to announce its participation in this year’s Art Athina Virtual 2021 – Art Athina Pop Up. Last year, PCAI showcased works from its collection by George Drivas and Vassilis P. Karouk. This time presents video works by artists Bianca Kennedy & The Swan Collective, Kyriaki Goni, Hypercomf, and Kosmas Nikolaou in the New Media Space section of the program.
Art Athina returns with a dual presentation, through the online platform Αrt Athina Virtual, just like last year, as well as the group exhibition Art Athina Pop Up, an extension of Art Athina Virtual, which will reconnect the artistic audience with artists and galleries, acting as an initial step towards normality in the post-coronavirus era. Art Athina Virtual is organized under the patronage of H. E. The President of the Hellenic Republic, Mrs Katerina Sakellaropoulou.
Art Athina opened its digital doors on Monday 1st November 2021, through the newly designed platform Αrt Athina Virtual (www.aavirtual.gr), where viewers have the opportunity to “visit”, without any cost, 58 galleries and project spaces, and meet artists and their artworks without any time constraints, as the platform will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days of the week, until the end of November.
The group exhibition Art Athina Pop Up will be hosted at the ground floor of King George Hotel, located at Syntagma Square, from the 12th until the 21st of November. Art Athina Pop Up, curated by Art Athina artistic director, Stamatia Dimitrakopoulou, will present one artwork submitted by each of the galleries and project spaces participating in Art Athina Virtual. The exhibition will have free admission and will follow all the designated health measures to guarantee the health of the audience. Each artwork in Art Athina Pop Up will be accompanied by a QR code, which visitors will be able to scan and automatically connect to the artwork shown in the gallery’s digital booth. The design of the exhibition has been undertaken by the architectural office Objects of Common Interest based in New York and Athens.
Art Athina Virtual 2021 will be accompanied, as always, by a parallel artistic program, which has gained over the years a stable and enthusiastic audience. This year, the Live Talks & Art Athina Podcast category will take place live at the foyer of Theatre Pallas, under the direction of Katerina Zacharopoulou. The program will also include the annual talk of the Educational Program of the Hellenic Art Galleries Association and The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation in collaboration with Athens School of Fine Arts, under the direction of Daphne Politi, Head of the Educational Program 2020/2021. This year’s performance program is curated by art historian and curator Kostas Stasinopoulos, while the Video / New Media Space category returns as an expanded version, showing digital works through the Art Athina Virtual platform, as well as AR works in the streets of Athens.
Performance:
Art Athina Virtual’s performance (film activations) program, curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos, curator and art historian (Assistant Curator, Live Program, Serpentine) titled Anticipations and Awakenings, embraces anachronism, excess, anxiety and dread as strategic positions for our disjointed present. Anticipations and Awakening acts like a membrane between the real and the imagined, the actualized and the dreamt, hovering above a trembling now.
Featuring works by The AfroGreeks, Spyros Aggelopoulos, Eleni Bagaki, FYTA & friends, Michaela Gleave, Aristeidis Lappas, Nova Melancholia, Maro Michalakakos, Vassilis Noulas, Louiza Ntourou, Malvina Panagiotidi and Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Nana Sachini, Vasilis Salpistis, Serapis Maritime, Aggelos Skourtis, Eliza Soroga, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Poka-Yio, Boyd Webb.
The Programme will be accessible through Art Athina Virtual.
New Media Space
In collaboration with DESTE Foundation, the cultural organization Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative (PCAI) and the British digital platform Daata, the section New Media Space will present videos, NFTs, as well as eight AR artworks commissioned by Daata, visible through the Daata App, through which users will be able to scan QR codes in different parts of Athens’ center. All the artworks within the category New Media Space are productions of the past year.
Artists participating include: Αaajiao, Bianca Kennedy & The Swan Collective, Elliot Dodd, Eva Papamargariti, Florian Meisenberg, Hypercomf, Jeremy Couillard, Keiken, Kosmas Nikolaou, Kyriaki Goni, Pat Flynn, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Urs Fisher.
Visit: here
Live Talks & Αrt Athina Podcast
The annual talks program of Art Athina returns to a physical space, taking place live at the foyer of Pallas Theatre from Saturday 13 November to Sunday 21 November. After each talk the conversation will be uploaded on Art Athina Virtual in the form of a new Αrt Athina Podcast.
The section Live Talks, curated by Katerina Zacharopoulou under the title “Sentimental Education” will present 5 unexpected conversations with acclaimed curators, art historians, artists, and writers.
The Live Talks section will also include the annual talk of the Educational Program of the Hellenic Art Galleries Association and The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, conducted in collaboration with Athens School of Fine Arts, and directed by Daphne Politi, Head of the Educational Program 2020/2021. For a fourth consecutive year, the program introduced 140 students from the Fine Arts and Art History Departments to visual artists and theoreticians, aiming to inform, inspire, and prepare them for their introduction to the art world.
More information: aavirtual.gr/
