Text by Kiriakos Spirou


The severe lockdown imposed in Greece during most part of 2020 has affected the artistic community in many and profound ways. To cope with isolation and the disruption of their creative lives, artists in Athens came up with different ways of collaborating and socialising online while art spaces and schools remained shuttered. One such group consisting of eleven artists is now exhibiting their work at KOREN, a new artist-run space in Koukaki. Curated by Fairda Vasileiadou, the show features mostly master’s students from the Athens School of Fine Arts, who began meeting regularly in November 2020 as a way to stay in touch and keep a creative dialogue going away from their school. The exhibition Anew is the physical result of that collective process, which according to the curator’s note is seeking to reveal the “artistic bonds” and “emotional connections that were established between the participating artists, in a virtual room of collectivity and empowerment”. When I visited, several of the artists were present and happy to discuss the work (and I was even offered cookies). The exhibition space’s function as a gathering place is therefore highlighted, and the exhibition itself becomes more of the hinge for new meetings and discussions to take place in real life.

Participating artists: Sotiris Fokeas, Thanos Foundas, Voula Koukkou, Natalia Manta, Euripides Papadopetrakis, Xenia Papadopoulou, Ilias Papailiakis, Irene Ragusini, Katerina Sarra, Christina Spanou, Eleni Tsamadia.