Athens — Last afternoon, Pennsylvania-born Athens-based artist Jennifer Nelson struggled with her new project in a spacious temporary studio. The corner was packed with garbage bags of different colors used in her installation: “waste (inheritance)”.
Last year, Nelson collected packaging and material waste from his family. Until September, she turns her household waste into a giant sculpture and wears it during a performance at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST). It’s her way of raising awareness about the trash that humans produce and the burden it creates for future generations.
The Waste Workshop is one of seven exhibitions commemorating the resurrection of EMST, an international and Greek museum of contemporary art.
Born in 2000 as a nomadic facility, it moved to its current site seven years ago. However, due to the Greek economic crisis, bureaucratic delays and pandemics, EMST officially opened earlier this month as a fully operated museum. A festival was held on the premises. A remodeled brewery with a large foyer, multiple gallery levels and a terrace with panoramic views of the city.
Another reason for the delay in opening was that “in this country, successive governments were frankly not interested in contemporary art.” The focus so far has been on “our classical heritage and ancient relics. There are many things we need to protect and we are a small country.”
Gregos also said that there was a “big gap in education” when it came to modern and contemporary art. Greece “has never actually experienced modernism.” If you were an artist who wanted a career in the 1960s, “I had to go abroad.”
She said her attitude changed under Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsutakis, who has been in power since 2019. His government persuaded her to move from Brussels, where she lived and worked since 2006, to Athens: her annual budget was 9 million euros ($ 9.5 million), about two earlier. It will be doubled.
Gregos is the curator of EMST’s first major exhibition, “Statecraft and Beyond” (until October 30th). This is a group show to see how the authority of the nation-state and government is exercised and challenged by technology, globalization and extreme nationalism.
Covering the big wall is the work of Pakistani artist Bani Abidi, “The Encouraging Hands of Big Men, Little Men, and All Men” (2021). , Represents the power of the patriarch.
On another wall, German artist Tomaskillper displays 90 charcoal paintings depicting the far-right attacks on refugees and asylum seekers in various parts of Germany.
The Greek state may have been late for a party of contemporary art, but a private foundation funded by the country’s largest fortune has endeavored to make up for it. Deste, Neon, Onassis and Stavros Niarchos Foundations carry out shows and cultural programs, distribute grants and fund artist Residencies. (Recently, the new commercial gallery district has also grown rapidly in the port of Athens, Piraeus.)
This summer, the Foundation offers a variety of cultural programs.
In an impressive post-industrial space, Neon, a former tobacco factory founded by Greek entrepreneur Dimitris Daskalopoulos of Billionaire, featured 18 large installations by artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Annette Messager and Paul McCarthy. “Dream On” is on display. The artwork comes from the collection of Daskalopoulos, who donated more than 350 works to four museums including EMST, Guggenheim and Tate in April.
Founded by Greek Cypriot Billionaire Dakis Joano, DESTE died last year at the age of 51 and hosts a homage to California artist Kaari Upson, who worked on sculpture, video and drawings. ..
Headquartered in a huge building with an exhibition gallery and two theaters opened in 2011, the Onassis Foundation, named after the son of shipping king Aristotle Onassis, is an unexpected location at Pedion to Areos Park. We are exhibiting digital art.
Aphroditi Panagiotakou, Cultural Director of the Onassis Foundation, said at an event co-hosted with the New York Times at the Art for Tomorrow Conference last week that the economic crisis “mapped Greece for all bad reasons.” “. Helped the world “forget the Parthenon for a while” and focus on the reality of the city of Athens.
She said the recession, the collapse of real estate prices, and the 2017 Documenta exhibition (partly held in Athens) led artists to move to Athens and build an edgy art scene.
“For now, the big question is how can we keep ourselves right,” she asked. “Now that the crisis isn’t here as well, how can we keep the international scene interested in Athens?”
Maleva Grabowski Mitsutakis, wife of the Prime Minister and advocate of Greek culture and crafts, agreed that “maintaining the current momentum of the art scene” is important. She suggested that Athens should be the bridge between the past and the present, the center of the “dialogue between our classical heritage and modern creativity.”
“Athens is one of the most important cities in the world through its cultural heritage, even if it is a surrounding city,” she said.
Nicholas Yatromanorakis, a graduate of Harvard University who was appointed to this position last year and the country’s first Deputy Minister of Contemporary Culture, suffers from occasional similarities between Athens and global capitals such as Berlin. Said.
“The goal is not to make it a new New York, a new London, or a new Paris,” he said.
He introduces his work to artists across cultural spheres “making a living from their art, from their crafts” and “what they can do across the borders of Athens and Greece”. I explained it as helping to “do”.
“We should make Athens the best version of itself,” he said.
