Featuring Athens-based artists and young creatives, “Anathena” highlights a dynamic aspect of local contemporary artistic production that has its affinities with street and music culture. It presents works largely unknown to the city’s mainstream art world, as these artists have long been using their own self-devised production and distribution mechanisms and channels. Most of the participating artists work professionally in diverse areas, such as graphic and web design, film, and music. Their work draws from different aspects of what is broadly termed “visual contemporary culture” and is frequently community-based, growing from social networks and friendships, common influences, and taste. Their work does not represent a movement or a self-manifested scene, but rather artistic undercurrents. They do not necessarily work together and the majority of them do not insist on labelling what they do as “art.” This self-exclusion from the local art establishment is, in a way, an “anathema.” Lacking the polemic and anger usually related to the term, this “anathema” is gentle, and suggests more an attitude of romantic indifference rather than one of dogmatic denouncement. —Marina Fokidis, Marina Gioti
Curated by Marina Fokidis and Marina Gioti. Held at DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, from October 20, 2006 to February 17, 2007.
Book-catalog design on the occasion of the exhibition. Edited by Marina Fokidis and Christos Lialios. Participating artists: b., Black & Decker, Vassilis Botoulas, Alexandros Dimitriadis, Dimitris Emmanouil, The Erasers, Stelios Faitakis, Stylianos Georgiou, Marina Gioti, Andreas Kassapis, Filippos Kavakas, Panos Koutrouboussis, Fotis Kouzinos, Christos Lialios, Lo-Fi, Dimitris Merantzas, Andreas Mouzakitis, Pantelis Pantelopoulos, Stavroula Papadaki, Dimitris Papadatos, Fivos Papadopoulos, Nektarios Pappas, Marios Perrakis, Angelo Plessas, Natasha Poulantza, Dimitris Protopapas, Hercules Renieris, Ioakim Sidiropoulos, Giorgos Tourlas, Andreas Vais, Lefteris Yakoumakis and Zoe Zillion.
