In December 2023, the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Athens (EMST) inaugurates What if women ruled the world, its next cycle of exhibitions with a new initiative dedicated to the work of artists who are women or identify as feminine.
As part of a unique program including the re-hanging of the collection, from December 14 and for seven months, the museum will gradually be taken over by women artists. The three-part program begins in December this year and will conclude in May 2024.
Katerina Gregos, artistic director of EMST Athens, notes: “This is the very first time that a major public museum has exclusively exhibited works by women artists, both in its permanent collection and in its exhibition program temporary. Women artists and cultural practitioners are still underrepresented in most aspects of the art world and we wanted to flip the narrative to radically reimagine what a museum would look like if, instead of a few symbolic pieces, the works of Female artists made up the majority.
There will be solo presentations by historically significant contemporary Greek artists, such as Leda Papaconstantinou and Chrysa Romanos, leading contemporary artists of a younger generation Danai Anesiadou and Malvina Panayiotidou, and internationally renowned artists such as Yael Bartana, Alexis Blake, Claudia Comte, Hadassah Emmerich. , Lola Flash, Bouchra Khalili and Tala Madani, as well as the very first presentation of a selection of works from the Gift Collection by D. Daskalopoulos.
What if women ruled the world will unfold over time in three parts:
First part : What if women ruled the world
December 14, 2023
WOMEN, together
The EMST will inaugurate a complete overhaul of its permanent collection on the 3rd floor of the museum. Title WOMEN, together, it will feature more than 25 works by more than 20 women artists and female-identifying artists. These include works by Ghada Amer (Egypt), Helene Appel (Germany), Bertille Bak (France), Karla Black (UK), Hera Buyucktasciyan (Turkey), Diana Al Hadid (Syria), Eleni Kamma ( Greece), Tala Madani (Iran), Annette Messager (France), Tracey Moffatt (Australia), Cornelia Parker (UK), Agnieszka Polska (Poland), Christiana Soulou (Greece), Maria Tsagkari (Greece) and Gillian Wearing ( United Kingdom). Reflecting the growing diversity of the EMSΤ collection, WOMEN, together will present for the very first time a significant number of works from the Don of the D. Daskalopoulos Collection, the largest donation in the history of the museum. The exhibition also includes a new long-term loan of a major work by Etel Adnan (Lebanon), courtesy of the Saradar Collection.
Léda Papaconstantinou
The Museum is pleased to announce the first major retrospective of Léda Papaconstantinou (born 1945), one of the most important artists in the history of contemporary art in Greece. For nearly five decades, Papaconstantinou has developed a diverse body of work. Always centered on the body, it has taken various forms, including performance, sculpture, video, site-specific installations and painting, in order to explore questions of gender, sexuality, collective and personal memory, history, politics and ecology. An essential reference on the Greek art scene, his work has inspired generations of artists.
Chris Romanos
EMST is delighted to present a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist’s work Chris Romanos (1931-2006), one of the most important Greek artists of her generation. His stay in France between 1961 and 1981 was decisive for the formation of his artistic identity. She belonged to a group of Greek diasporic artists who lived and worked in major Western art centers after the war. It is significant because, for the first time in the history of Greek art, a woman artist did not simply follow international artistic developments but co-shaped them. Perhaps best known for her complex collages, which critically and incisively combined advertisements and mass media images depicting political and social reality, Romanos’ uncompromising gaze focused on consumer society and the domination of the image, remained lively and ironic throughout. his life.
Danaï Anésiadou: D Goods
EMST is pleased to host the first solo exhibition in Greece of the Belgian-Greek artist Danaï Anésiadou. Born in Germany to parents of Greek origin and based in Brussels, Anesiadou has over the past 15 years developed a range of metaphysical and personal concerns into a seductive and mercurial work, which references cinema, occult sciences, Greek antiquity and contemporary affairs. Described as “Europe’s poster child for the 21st century crisis”, his work is highly sensitive to both the political fabric and the invisible fabric of reality. Armed with a keen interest in historiography and a deep interest in politics, she challenges what we take to be true, highlighting the double standards and false dichotomies of the dominant discourse. Danai Anesiadou: D Possessions draws visitors into an allegorical scenography composed of newly produced sculptures and collages linked to the inflation of political and spiritual crises. Like a modern-day exorcist, Anesiadou attempts to purge and transform not only her material possessions but also the energy flows that vibrate around us. The exhibition is co-produced with WIELS, Brussels.
Alexis Blake: Allegory of the painted woman
For the official opening of What if women ruled the worldEMSΤ will present a performance by 2021 Rome Prize winner Alexis Blake (Netherlands), which will mark the artist’s first presentation in Greece. Blake’s multidisciplinary practice fuses visual arts, performance and dance. She studies how the body is represented and treated as an archive, which she then critically examines, disrupts and renegotiates. Her work directly engages with the representation and subjectification of women’s bodies, while activating them as sites and agents of sociopolitical change. In doing so, she created languages of resistance and spaces to expose and escape systems of power. For the opening, Blake will present his flagship and emblematic work Allegory of the painted woman, with two performers and four musicians, which challenges the archetypal and patriarchal representation of women in art history.
Second part: What if women ruled the world
February 10, 2024
The second part of the exhibition cycle dedicated to the work of women artists includes the first European museum exhibition by Tala Madani (Iran), as well as personal exhibitions by Bertille Bak (France), Yael Bartana (Israel), Claudia Comte (Switzerland) . ), Hadassah Emmerich (Netherlands/Indonesia), Lola Flash (United States), Bouchra Khalili (Morocco) and Malvina Panayiotidou (Greece). Bertille Bak’s project, entitled Projectorwill launch a new component of the museum’s exhibition program that will highlight the work of an artist from the museum’s collection, through a solo presentation within the collection.
Part III: What if women ruled the world
May 11, 2024
Penny Siopis
The EMST will inaugurate the first major museum retrospective of the work of Penny Siopis. Born in South Africa in 1953 to Greek parents, Siopis became known in the early 1980s and 1990s with her feminist and historical paintings, both exemplary in their socially committed stance in favor of women’s rights and resistance against apartheid. Following South African national liberation, his interdisciplinary practice explored the persistence and fragility of memory, notions of truth, and the complex entanglements of personal and collective histories. Working with a wide range of materials, Siopis has explored body politics, grief and shame, collective history and, more recently, the relationship between the human and the non-human in the context of climate change. In doing so, she has established herself as one of the most important artistic voices on the African continent and beyond and has become an important reference for artists of the younger generation. The EMST is proud to be able to present the artist’s work in its entirety for the first time.
Following What if women ruled the worldthe next cycle of exhibitions will open on June 13, 2024, the centerpiece of which will be the major international collective exhibition Why watch animals?, presented on two floors of the museum and organized by Katerina Gregos, artistic director of EMSΤ. The exhibition is inspired by the book of the same name by John Berger, which explores the animal-human relationship in modern times and how animals have gradually been marginalized from human societies. By addressing the issue of the estrangement between humans and animals and the alienation of the latter from their natural environment, the exhibition aims to draw attention to the tragic fate of animals at the hands of humans and to open discussions on the urgency of recognizing animal sentience and animal rights.
EMST | The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens is funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
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