Towards a New ReMapping

December 9th, 2011

By Christina Androulidaki

While Athens has been experiencing some of its roughest days within the midst of the financial crisis, the severe austerity measures and its people’s rage, the third edition of ReMapKM was launched this September 12 to October 30, 2011.

ReMap is a biannual event held in the area of Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, one of the most historic, diverse, arresting and yet deprived areas of downtown Athens that extends from Achileos to Peiraios street and from Karaiskaki square to the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos. Set up as a private initiative by collector and real estate entrepreneur Iasson Tsakonas, ReMap started off in 2007 parallel to the 1^st Athens Biennale and developed to one of the largest contemporary art events in Greece comprising some 50 contemporary art exhibitions organized by independent curators, as well as some of the most prominent Greek and international contemporary art galleries.

Yet, ReMap is not as glam and blithe as it sounds. Taking place at various sites around the area, mostly unoccupied apartments, rundown shops and dilapidated buildings all owned by Oliaros, Tsakonas’ real estate and development company, ReMap has won, over the recent years, perhaps as many forceful fans, as doubtful critics.

For how does one contemplate art or react to an artwork after passing by a dozen brothels, experience a close encounter with poverty, get nearly mugged at knifepoint and stumble upon more than a few junkies shooting up? Leaving their hip metropolitan spaces in cities like Zurich or Paris for not-so-clean Metaxourgeio, the surroundings often come as a shock to the participating artists and gallerists, for not to say the prestigious art collectors and wondering tourists that happen to ‘discover’ the area.

On the other hand, the fact that ReMap for its most part depends upon a private individual who has direct interests in developing the area has turned many highly suspicious. However, we should not fail to see here what ReMap has set to achieve. That is to create an alternative platform for the production of contemporary art within the urban context enhancing Athens’s positioning in the international art scene and in that, it has been a success story.

So, there are more issues of moral nature here. Notably the late October attacks on several curatorials participating in ReMap. Although only a handful of spaces were attacked, the protestors-who threw buckets of dirt and signed their manifestos as “Shit happens-Antifascists” were perhaps not the only ones who failed to read between the lines and rushed to compare art with life, accusing artists and all participating parties in ReMap as elitists, who see art instead of life and have no concerns whatsoever with society.

Projects like the show PLACEMENTS – REPLACEMENTS – MISPLACEMENTS: Towards a New Remapping dealt exactly with the very idea of relocation (social, national, economic, political) and focused on the exploration of this notion by demonstrating through the works of 8 Greek and international artists the dynamics and problematics of such a remapping. The works brought up issues of emigration, immigration, warfare, human rights abuse, social exclusion, inequality, marginalization, xenophobia, as well as utopian dreaming, multiculturalism, diversity, hope and rebirth.

Theo Prodromidis, Untitled (stage design for the performance of a play for a meteorite state),2011, wood, 400 x 250 cm (detail) & Notes for the performance of a play for a meteorite state (Miss Bikini 2011 balancing act), 2011, inkjet print, 100 x 70 cm

The invited artists worked on a variety of media such as sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, video and performance, with Augusta Atla producing photographic collages that combine elements from her performances, popular magazines, anatomic books and folkloric Greek costumes to create peculiar works that touch on issues of femininity, motherhood and the suffering female body. Maro Fassouli’s sculpture drawing attention to issues of encapsulation and social exclusion, explores ideas of the hidden and the visible, inner and outer space, the familiar and the foreign. Alana Kakoyiannis’ poetic documentary film reflects on the notion of home through the lens of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot displacement on the divided island of Cyprus. It captures the potency of the political conflict through personal perspectives. Alexandros Laios’ works that were commenting on the inability of the West to accommodate into society, as well as the permanent state of “transit” these people are forced to endure. Maria Polyzoidou who paints an imaginary world, a picturesque landscape that falls apart, like the miniature of a world we have dreamt of. Theo Prodromidis who envisages a utopian structure upon the remains of an architectural plan that was never built, while Dimitris Foutris who intervenes on the exterior of the building with the words “The memory of a memory that we are all left with”. It is a comment on the function and history of the building and the rapidly changing state of the neighboring area and finally, Anastassis Stratakis, presents a segment of his photographic series Strange Fruit, referring on the way history repeats itself by the use of violence, obscurantism and exclusion from the time when witch hunting was performed, up to the assaults triggered by xenophobia performed in the present day.

Augusta Atla, Objet de femmes – de la vida, 2011, Photo-collage on paper, 76 x 58 cm

Maro Fassouli, Cell, 2009, wax, wood, 70 x 80 x 110 cm

Alana Kakoyiannis, Still, 2009, HDV,18:00 mins

Maria Polyzoidou, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm

Alexandros Laios, Heimlich

Anastassis Stratakis, Strange Fruit (Untitled #7), 2010, Black and white photograph, 38 x 28.7 cm

Although I wouldn’t go as far as Rachel Donadio, who wrote in the New York Times that “Art galleries in Athens are thriving” I would partly agree with her in that Greece’s debt drama has been a muse for artists. In a society that is so swiftly transforming into something new and difficult to comprehend, in the midst of what is perhaps the worst financial dead-end that Europe has ever faced and where huge struggles take place, it is only natural to underestimate the role of art. Nonetheless, it is in times like these that art becomes necessary in order to filter the changes and comprehend our identity and goal. As a result, when life may seem much more important than art, let’s imagine how dull and pointless it would also be without it.

Tags: Alana Kakoyiannis, Alexandros Laios, Anastassis Stratakis, Athens, Augusta Atla, Contemporary Art, Dimitris Foutris, Greece, Iasson Tsakonas, Maria Polyzoidou, Maro Fassouli, Rachel Donadio, ReMap, Theo Prodromidis