Video installation of the AfroGreeks-prologue as part of the [a]known destinations chapter III: reconnection – a second chance exhibition accompanied by live events by the African community
09/09-10/10/2019 We Need Books library and St. Therese Catholic church, Kypseli, Athens, Greece
After the first public discussion and the screening of the 14-minute video the AfroGreeks-prologue at the Kypseli Market, a neighborhood where the largest number of members of the African community live, an exhibition with a video installation followed, in places of particular importance in Kypseli.
The curator of the [a]known destinations chapter III: reconnection – a second chance the exhibition Dr. Kostas Prapoglou, attempted to extend the exhibition from the Zarifis house, where it was based, to the wider area of Kypseli, including other sites in the immediate vicinity.
In the context of the exhibition, director Menelaos Karamaghiolis and the Døcumatism team presented the AfroGreeks (2019), a documentary that was screened on specific dates in the new premises of We Need Books, a non-governmental organization – lending library for immigrants on 7 Evia Street in Kypseli. It was also screened at the Catholic Church of St. Therese at 32 Eptanissou Street, in conjunction with an event featuring the congregation’s choir.
The purpose of the exhibition was to negotiate ideas related to the concept of reconnection. Taking inspiration from the energy healing terminology in holistic medicine called Reconnection and Reconnective Healing – which aims to re-establish the wholeness of existence by achieving an inner and outer balance and harmony on a material, emotional and spiritual level – the exhibition explored those parameters related to aspects of one’s own being and its capacities that activate self-healing mechanisms.
The area of Kypseli is characterized by its huge building stock of high architectural quality that has fallen victim to the socio-economic and cultural crisis in Greece in recent decades. At the same time, the invasion of foreign investors who are incessantly buying up everything for sale in the name of the golden visa program or airbnb, has resulted in a rapid change of the local social fabric that had already undergone a phase of radical restructuring in the 1990s.
The building of the former Zarifis House, built in 1924, is still resisting these external adverse factors as much as it can. It is a springboard for the process of reconnecting the past with the present. 20 visual artists of the site of the former Zarifis House were therefore invited to present works using their visual vocabulary that are site-specific and context-responsive to ideas related to the conceptual line of the exhibition.
