ioLi tzanetaki

⏳ Last chance to visit "Echoes of History, Shadows of Progress", Sammy Baloji’s solo exhibition at @emstathens 📍 This Saturday at 12:00, I will be giving a guided tour of the exhibition — please join! For more than two decades, Baloji has explored the complex entanglements of cultural identity, colonial history, and industrial exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His practice unfolds as an ongoing research into the cultural, architectural, and industrial heritage of Katanga — a contested, resource-rich region in the country’s southeast — while critically examining the enduring impact of Belgian colonisation. Bringing together installations, video works, and photographic series from the past twelve years of his practice, the exhibition also includes a new commission. It traces the history, present-day realities, and contradictions that shape the formation of Congo, examining encounters between the pre-colonial Kongo empire and Europe, the violent exploitation of people and resources under Belgian rule, and the contemporary corporate extraction practices that continue to devastate landscapes and ecosystems. @twentyninestudioproduction : Sammy Baloji and Rosa Spaliviero, Juliette Hourçourigaray, Marek Szponik, Henriette Gillerot, Minne De Meyer Engelbeen Exhibition Design: @thalia_melissa Lighting: @sakisbirbilis Graphic Design: @eleni_spyridaki ✨ Don’t miss this final opportunity to see the exhibition! 📸: @paristav

Sunday reading 📚 🐙The second issue of @octopus_emst “Wild Words — Remembering and Imagining Human and Animal Relationships” is out now, released alongside the major international exhibition ‘Why Look at Animals?’ This issue explores human-animal connections through the lens of contemporary art, literature, and theory. From ecofeminism to food politics, posthumanism to cinema. It features essays, stories, poems, and specially commissioned illustrations. ✨ Guest editor for Issue #2: @filipaaaaaaaaaaa Featuring contributions by: Myriam Bahaffou, Sue Donaldson, Chris Pearson, Daisy Hildyard, Gastón Carrasco Aguilar, Miranda Terzopoulou, @kyvelim , Maria Tsgkari and @janisrafa 🎨 Iconography by @michelademattei and original artwork by @suecoeart 📝 Director: @katerina.gregos | Editor-in-chief: @tramboulis | Editorial consultant: @iolitzan 📖 Read it free online: https://octopus.emst.gr/

📽️ "Rumba Rules, New Genealogies" (2020) This Sunday at 21:00 at CineFix – @emstathens rooftop open-air cinema! 🎬 Directed by David N. Bernatchez & Sammy Baloji (@twentyninestudioproduction ), in collaboration with Kiripi Katembo Siku Permeating the daily life of one of the great orchestras of the current generation, "Rumba Rules" proposes an incursion into the arcanes of a monumental African music. Ya Mayi, Lumumba, Xéna La Guerrière, Pitchou Travolta, Alfred Solo, Soleil Patron and many others: nearly thirty artists feed the creative life of the Brigade Sarbati Orchestra. By entering the group and the city of Kinshasa, the film gets into the rumba as if it were penetrating a rootstock. Through studio work, rehearsals and concerts, different portraits offer a foray into the dynamics and stories of this highly acclaimed Congolese music. From local roots to the patrons from the diaspora, the voices of the Rumba Rules polyphony are past and present. 🎤 Following the screening, join us for a discussion with Sammy Baloji & David N. Bernatchez, @katerina.gregos , and myself. 🔗 /films/rumba-rules

Some excerpts from ‘CHANGING COLOURS.’ , ioLi Tzanetaki in conversation with Lola Flash 🔗Tap the link in bio to read more

What an amazing week of studio visits @athens . Thank you for the invitation @emstathens and @katerina.gregos Thank you Aliki Karioti, @fivos_sakalis @vickyTriantafylloudi for making this trip so smooth and joyful So happy that my visit was combined with the visit of the amazing @catherinenichols567 (So looking forward to your #18thLyonBiennale in 2026) And of course a big shout out to all the amazing artists that took the time to meet us and share their work. And @antonispittas for taking the time to show us the city in all its glory Here soms pics of my meetings with three of the grand dames of Greek Feminist art Despina Meimaroglou, Leda Papaconstantinou and Eleni christodoulou And of course some pics of the current shows on @emst (shout out to Sammy Baloji for his amazing solo curated by @iolitzan ) To be continued…. #InternationalCuratorsVisitingProgramme #NationalMuseumofContemporaryArtAthens

Opening this Thursday! ✨ Two solo exhibitions + two large-scale in situ commissions at @emstathens : @janisrafa , Sammy Baloji (@twentyninestudioproduction ), @kasperbosmans & @talbot.emma Sammy Baloji (@twentyninestudioproduction ), ‘Echoes of History, Shadows of Progress’ @janisrafa , ‘We Who Betrayed the Horses’ @kasperbosmans , ‘The Fuzzy Gaze’ @talbot.emma , ‘Human/Nature’ 🚀 Free Entry 🔗 More via link in @emstathens bio! 🎞️✂️ @sergiozalmas

After almost a year we say goodbye to 'SALT', @flashnine9 's solo presentation at @emstathens ! Working at the forefront of #queer visual politics for more than four decades, renowned photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. 🏳️‍🌈 🧂SALT is a series of portraits that feature iconic women aged over 70, who have had a quiet impact on their respective worlds and are still passionately engaged in their life’s work. In a culture where beauty is equated with youth, these women are not only beautiful but accomplished and making significant contributions to society. This intimate portrait series reflects their wisdom, attractiveness and power which is often disregarded because of ageism. 🔗https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/lola-flash-salt 📷 1. Esther, 2013 2. Ruth, 2014 3. Ilona, 2012 4. Rudean, 2016 5. Installation view at EMΣT by @paristav

Today is the last chance to visit "Shitty Disco" @talamadani 's solo exhibition at @emstathens !! ✨ In her multilayered work, Madani creates enigmatic scenes, depicting human figures at their most vulnerable, private, violent, absurd, and perplexing moments. Moving steadily between immediacy and ambiguity, Madani dismantles preconceived gender roles and stereotypes to explore power structures, sexuality, group dynamics, westernised and idealised notions of family, and the construction of identity. Frequently referencing the visual language of cartoons, Madani’s often self-deprecating characters defy the laws of physics and engage in impossible degrees of senseless yet tragi-comic violence which brings a welcome degree of comic relief to a bleak scenario. Light is central to many of the artist’s paintings, connecting her work to cinema and art history. The title of the exhibition is inspired by Madani’s works of the same name. Made especially for the show at EMΣΤ, 'Shitty Disco' (2024) depicts a metaphysical nightclub, a place that moves between fantasy and nightmare, invoking film, technology and different states of consciousness. For the exhibition, Madani has also created a series of new site-specific wall paintings, which cover the four imposing columns in the centre of the exhibition space. Exhibition design: @yarvan 🔗 Find out more: https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/tala-madani-shitty-disco 📷 1: Shitty Disco, 2024 2, 4, 6, 8: @paristav 3: Boxed Head, 2011, The David and Indrė Roberts Collection 5: Untitled (Melody), 2020 7: Guts, 2011, D.Daskalopoulos Collection

💜 D POSSESSIONS After 11 months we said goodbye to @danai.anesiadou 's solo exhibition at @emstathens 🌀An allegorical scenography consisting of sculptures, collages, and the artist's own furniture referencing the rise of political, social and spiritual crises. In an attempt to permanently get rid of all her personal belongings, she cast them into epoxy. The sculptures carry multiple forms and shapes created from moulds of props from film sets. Anesiadou looks to trace connections between things that on the surface seem utterly unrelated – from conspiracy theories, Hollywood and the Pentagon’s Entertainment Industrial Complex, reality TV and the fashion industry and references to ancient Greek sculpture, surrealism and B-movies. What impact may these have on the state of our world and our minds today? The different elements that make up this kaleidoscopic exhibition create an immersive and alluring environment which, at the same time, suggests a sense of the uncanny, the surreal and the uneasy. Playing with rumour, fantasy and the mystical, Anesiadou’s work acts as an acute socio-political commentary on the multiple and multi-layered crises we face, the invisible, repressed or darker sides of reality, and the extreme polarisation we witness on a daily basis. Co-produced with @wiels_brussels 🔗 Find out more: https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/danai-anesiadou 📷 @paristav

Last chance to see!! 🌞 “Flying too close to the sun” @hera.buyuktasciyan_studio & @tsagkari_maria Curated by @katerina.gregos & @iolitzan Organized by @schwarzfoundation 📆 06.08 - 29.09.2024 at @artspacepythagorion The exhibition brings together two artists, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan and Maria Tsagkari, whose practice is research-based and concerned predominantly with the history and memory of the wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean and especially that of Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of the idea of the nation-state. Both artists’ practice is centred on a confrontation with the past; through a multi-disciplinary approach, they weave memories, reflections and storytelling in order to demonstrate how the personal and the historical converge and intersect. In their work, both Hera Büyüktaşcıyan and Maria Tsagkari, bring to the fore issues of absence, invisibility, as well as marginalised, suppressed or forgotten narratives in order to anchor memory through unseen and obscured aspects of time, space as well as cultural memory as they all relate to ruptures in socio-political histories. Excavating and unearthing unexpected narratives, occurrences and momentous events the artists highlight the entanglements between geographies of proximity and point to the material and psychological memory of unstable or contested spaces and territories. Their work explores the way longing or trauma manifests itself through objects and activates mechanisms of memory, by calling forth experiences of war, displacement, exodus and migration and the parallel histories that emerge because of them. 🔗 /initiative/flying-too-close-to-the-sun 📸 @vassoparaschi 🙏💛 @sergiozalmas @zacharopoulouk @construcktivist_ee @madame_de_merteuil @andie_didibliss

📚🏆 We are thrilled that our publication for @hannah_toticki 's solo exhibition "Everything, Everywhere, All The Time“ at @emstathens designed by @bend_hyperstudio just won the prize for Exhibition Catalogue Design at this year's @ebgegr awards! 💛 Designed by: @bend_hyperstudio Edited by: @iolitzan , @tramboulis Texts: @katerina.gregos , @iolitzan and @hannah_toticki Photography: @paristav . Printer: @kostopoulosprintinghouse 📷 @bend_hyperstudio 🔗https://ebge.gr/submissions/38282?awards=%CE%95%CE%92%CE%93%CE%95&years=2024 Get your copy now at @shopatemst !

🎬 Reflecting on special moments🌟 A few months back, I had the opportunity to be part of something truly special - the shooting of the poignant TWIST show presented by @arte.tv delving into the vibrant Greek art scene. ✨TWIST is the cultural magazine show that visits a different European metropolis in each episode to take the pulse of its artistic scene. At that moment my installation «THIS IS THE PLACE GENTLEMEN!» curated by @iolitzan was on display at the Goethe Institute as part of the EVROVISION exhibition organized by @ifa.de and curated by @sabinaklemm22 and @sanja_kojic_mladenov While at the same time I was getting ready for «Elefsina mon amour» curated by @katerina.gregos Being part of this journey was an absolute honor and a privilege💫 I am deeply grateful to the remarkable presenter Bianca Hauda @bianca_hauda for her passion and insight, guiding us through every moment with grace 🎤 And of course, immense thanks to the director Eric Brinkman @erixonpov whose creative vision brought this captivating show to life. 🎥✨🙏💖 #twist #artetv #greekartscene 🏛️ A heartfelt thank you to the EMST @emstathens and the Goethe Institute @goetheinstitut_athen for graciously hosting us during the filming of TWIST! 🙏🎥 #emst #GoetheInstitute Stay tuned for more updates!