During the exhibition “Free from what”, Maria Papanikolaou will present the lecture-performance Motivation in the Project Room of the Service Yard
12.10, 14.10 & 29.10 (16.00- 20:00)
Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, as part of the annexM’s summer art programme, presents the monographic essay exhibition of Maria Papanikolaou entitled Free from what, curated by Anna Kafetsi.
The artist presents 5 new in situ space works specifically for the exhibition in the Service Courtyard, namely: 3 sculptural installations and 2 multi-channel video installations presented on projection and TV monitors.
Maria Papanikolaou, one of the most important artists of the younger generation based in Athens, studied law at the University of Athens, sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands and then at the Postgraduate School of Visual Arts of the ASFA, where she received her PhD in 2022. In her artistic work she combines sculpture, photography, video and performance in an attempt to explore a theme that has been with her since her early studies at the Law School: the restriction of freedom, imprisonment, incarceration, but also the possibility of escape and transgression of limits.
The exhibition – Maria Papanikolaou’s first solo show in Greece – includes new works especially for the industrial space of the Service Yard. Minimalist in situ interventions, sculptural installations and video installations will be presented in an imperceptibly dialogical relationship with each other, creating a low-voiced poetic universe. The ambiguous title phrase [free/of what], suspended between question and statement, sets the tone for the internal, deeply reflective nature of the exhibition.
The artist herself says of her works: “I make models and sculptures that depict spaces of potential escape, but also resilient tools that bear witness to imaginative ways of disentanglement and escape. Throughout human history, thousands of people have tried to escape from slavery, war, poverty, authoritarian regimes, concentration camps and prisons of all kinds. Combining data with imagination, my work traces through a variety of forms whether the stories of these people can be turned into a kind of textbook for the recovery of human freedom. In Art History we often see the incarcerated person presented as a passive victim who evokes our pity and sympathy. My artistic production is instead based on a series of experiments aimed at presenting man as that creative subject who invents ways of escape, satisfying his basic instinct for life and freedom. The works I am exhibiting are therefore proposals to break the bonds that may pin each or every one of us down in different states of unfreedom.”
Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12:00 – 20:00
Thursday 12:00 – 22:00 (free entrance)
Monday closed