PCAI, as a member of the Athens Culture Net, supports OPANDA’s new exhibition dedicated to Rebetiko; a musical genre particularly resilient and historically important that has been inscribed on UNESCO’s 2017 representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. According to Christoforos Marinos, OPANDA Curator of Exhibitions and Events: “The exhibition features work by 50 artists, mostly contemporary ones. Marquee names, such as Tsarouchis, Tassos, Fassianos, who are admittedly to be expected in an exhibition of this kind, are of course represented. Yet foremost in our minds was to examine how contemporary art converses with rebetiko – how contemporary Greek artists approach and interpret it. For this reason, most works on view were specially commissioned for this exhibition. Looking at them, one can identify affinities, similarities, even leitmotifs, such as a chair (toppled, broken, transformed) – a recurring theme in many works. Although the artworks on view showcase a wide range of mediums, including photography, engraving, video, sound installation, performance, and artists’ books, pride of place is – justifiably – given to painting. To this day, when the words rebetiko and visual arts are mentioned in the same breath, the first things that come to mind may be Alekos Fassianos’s illustrations for books by Elias Petropoulos, Tassos’s engravings for Bellou’s album covers, or the zeibekiko dancers that were such a frequently represented subject in Tsarouchis’s paintings. Rebetiko intends to expand the visual representation of the world of rebetiko, fundamentally changing the way it is perceived in the visual arts. This exhibition is testament to the fact that rebetiko is not only of contemporary interest but also contemporary in form.”
Participating artists: Sotos Alexiou, Vaggelis Avramopoulos, Irini Bachlitzanaki, Kostas Bezos, Chronis Botsoglou Cacao Rocks, The Callas, Panos Charalambous, Marios Chatziprokopiou in collaboration with Michael Alexandratos, Thalia Chioti, Kostas Christopoulos, Alekos Fassianos, Vassilis Gerodimos, Phoebe Giannisi, Apollonas Glykas Constantinos Hadzinikolaou, Charles Howard, Anestis Ioannou, Giorgos Ioannou, Giorgos Kontis Alexandros Korogiannakis, Panos Koutrouboussis Stamatis Lazarou, Esthir Lemi, Andreas Lolis, Maria Louizou, Dimitris Merantzas, Lambros Orfanos Aggelos Papadimitriou, Nikos Papadopoulos, Ilias Papailiakis, Rena Papaspyrou, Tassos Pavlopoulos Alexandros Psychoulis, Giorgos Sikeliotis, Ilias Sipsas Aspa Stasinopoulou, Spyros Staveris, Tassos, Yiannis Theodoropoulos, Petros Touloudis, Nikos Tranos, Maria Tsagkari, Yannis Tsarouchis Kostas Tsolis, Jannis Varelas, Filippos Vasileiou, Adonis Volanakis, Myrto Xanthopoulou and Katerina Zacharopoulou
The exhibition Rebetiko is held at the Municipal Gallery of Athens, the Athens Municipal Arts Centre, and the Olympia Municipal Music Theatre ‘Maria Callas’ from February 10 to April 3, 2022.
Photo: Panos Charalambous, Αbstract Zeybek, 1993, video stills from Phychagogia I
Activity aligned with Goals 4,8, 11, 17
