the AfroGreeks is an ongoing collective community project presented through video installations, accompanied by live public events, workshops, public dialogues, film screenings, podcasts, and other community-based initiatives that contribute to the creation of a freely accessible audiovisual archive. The aim is to give a voice and a means of expression to Greeks of African descent.
The project was launched in 2009 by the collective Døcumatism. Over the years, it has developed through a series of actions that led to a public discussion on the African diaspora in Athens, held at the Kypseli Municipal Market in 2019, as well as a video installation at the immigrant library “We Need Books” and at St. Therese Catholic Church, accompanied by parallel events organized by the Nigerian community. The term “Afro-Greek” became widely known through the project, mainly via social media, and began to be adopted by young people of African descent who approach the project in search of ways to express themselves.
The protagonists of the project’s video installation are 350 Afro-Greeks (so far), who live and work in Greece, are proud of their heritage and assert their right to be artists, striving by every means possible to express themselves. Their participation in the collective project the AfroGreeks offers them a chance to express themselves through a work of art they actively and creatively take part in multiple ways. Through this process, they become visible and declare openly that they are artists who give form to a powerful response against any type of racism.
The aim of the project is to create an open multimedia archive and a first record of the history of the African diaspora in Greece as an integral part of the national narrative and Greek history. To date, this archive contains 200 interviews, 85 documented public events, and an audiovisual research collection that represents an initial effort to document the history of the African diaspora in Greece over the past four centuries.
The project is of particular importance both for its protagonists and the artists that create it, as the Afro-Greeks are “recognized” as Greeks through artistic procedures and take part in a workshop collective community project that puts them in contact with their history and their past.
The project belongs to its members and to the communities of the African diaspora in Greece. It is coordinated by the anthropologist, performer, and curator Grace Nwoke, the activist Adla Sashati, and the actor, performer, and artist Ksenia Dania, members of the collective.
From the concert and presentation of collective community project the Afrogreeks by its protagonists during an event celebrating 15 years of Contemporary Art at the Cycladic Museum:
We are Grace and Alex
We are Afro-Greeks.
We started from the neighbourhood of Kypseli, which for many of us is our true homeland, and we work with Døcumatism and filmmaker from Kypseli Menelaos Karamaghiolis who – through a series of art events – tried to make this neighbourhood change, and no longer be considered a ghetto. We are afraid that it was considered a ghetto because of us.
Racism based on colour, prejudice and racial discrimination have made it very difficult for us to define our identity, our homeland and to feel Greek without being hindered by our origin and colour, even though most of us were born here. All the above make it difficult for us to find our way without constant obstacles in our everyday lives.
Most of us are artists that cannot easily find a place nor the time to express ourselves and show our work. During the last few years, through the AfroGreeks project, we’ve been trying to find ways to deal with all this and become visible. We believe that knowledge and art must not be afraid of the invisible parts of the city, like the ones we live in, and we are glad that you invited us to show you who we are.
We hope that you come and see us when we are exhibited as protagonists of a video installation and as artists in live events, where we will sing, dance, discuss, argue, watch films, redefine reality, and redefine ourselves.
We say all this audiovisually in every way in the project the AfroGreeks, which we have been developing since 2009 as a researching project and since 2015 through different kinds of actions. The aim is to exhibit moving image works along with public actions, videos of our own, of our lives, our occupations, our concerns and our dreams. There we narrate our stories and argue among ourselves whether we want to be called Afro-Greeks or not. Because we dream that art can become an essential “weapon” that may help to change the world and our lives decisively. To date, our project has 350 protagonists, 200 interviews, 85 actions and an archive spanning 4 centuries, and it continues to evolve.
Alongside each exhibition and video installation, our project includes an archive-workshop that brings together all the research we have been conducting for years on the African diaspora in Greece. There, the project continues to be filmed and edited in front of visitors, with their active participation.
Our purpose is to create an extensive archive of interviews, testimonies, and public actions that belongs to our communities and constitutes the first systematic attempt to document our history: the history of the African diaspora in Greece over the past four centuries, with a particular focus on the 20th and 21st centuries. It is a history that forms an integral part of Greece’s national history.
Because this is where we live. And this is where we belong.
The project belongs to our communities, to the artists it concerns, and to educational institutions. It is intended for any researcher or anyone else who wants to learn who we are and what we do.
Also a “task force” operates as part of the project, in co-operation with communities and organizations, it intervenes in crucial questions of its heroes and deals with various problems that are related to bureaucratic procedures we face on a daily basis.
Grace Nwoke, Anthropologist & Performer
Alex Loggovitis, Artist
