Stoa 

Installation in progress

Paper, fabric, wool, wood,plastic, acrylic, variable dimensions

 

Eminent Domain, curated by Eleni Tsopotou, Stoa 42, Athens, 2022

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Participating artists: Marina Velisioti, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Byron Kalomamas, Eleni Kotsoni, Giorgos Nikas, Eric Stephany, Despina Haritonidi & Panos Profitis

“Eminent domain” is an homage to artists of previous generations who left their mark on the city of Athens. An invite is addressed to contemporary visual artists to open a creative dialogue with these artists and the city of Athens itself.Through the story of Parthenis' house, from which he was forcibly evicted in 1967 to be demolished, the term of eminent domain, refined through cultural forms of the past, reappears.Yet other concepts such as real-estate auctioning, gentrification, the homogenisation of the urban landscape, the involvement of the State in forming urban space and life, the interaction of public and private sector to promote the priorities of city life and territory.Eleni Kotsoni creates the  installation Stoa  inspired by the area of Exarchia, where she lives and works, one of the most vibrant and politically charged areas of the city, field of conflict between citizens and the central state. Dismantled posters, burnt pieces of  riots rubbish bins, wood, plastic and other materials, act as spolia, fragments full of stories,  compose an installation with unclear boundaries, which like a living organism grows, climbs and occupies the surrounding space. As a being that feeds on the space itself, and lives between the inside and the outside, the private and the public, eating away at their separating boundaries and ultimately unifying it. A new gallery within the gallery, referring to the painting within the painting in the work of Spyros Vassiliou, on which the central idea of the exhibition is based.  A tunnel which, with its walls, the rifts of its walls, the streams of its roof,  forms an imaginary  link between the Stoa42 and Parthenis' house through modern city galleries, underground tunnels and ancient galleries at the foot of the Acropolis.