Re/member your House – the AfroGreeks exhibition (video installation and multimedia archive/laboratory)
01/11-23/12 2023 Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
the AfroGreeks, an ongoing project by the Athens-based collective Døcumatism was presented at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.
The exhibition includes an installation of a large number of videos and an archive/laboratory presenting all of the research on the African Diaspora in Greece that the project has undertaken to date. In parallel, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents the first major European retrospective dedicated to the founder of Døcumatism, the Greek artist and filmmaker Menelaos Karamaghiolis. The common title for both shows pays homage to James Baldwin and his manuscript “Remember This House,” which he left unfinished at the time of his death in 1987.
The presentation of the AfroGreeks at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève was accompanied by live events: concerts, workshops, open discussions and guided tours. The presentation of the project at the Centre is curated by Grace Chimela Eze Nwoke, a Greek anthropologist and performer of Nigerian descent and member of the Døcumatism team.
A collective community project about the African Diaspora, the AfroGreeks was initiated in Greece in 2015. It encompasses an extensive series of videos, interviews, social interactions, research, and events.
The term Afro-Greek is a self-proclamation. It was used publicly for the first time in 2019 as the title of a video installation presented at a Døcumatism event that year. It launched the artistic movement documented here, doing much to stimulate a public discussion about the African Diaspora communities in Athens and beyond.
Initial events took place in the neighborhood of Kypseli, one of Athen’s most culturally diverse areas which had been marginalized for a long time. Over the years, Døcumatism has created a network of collaborators within a community whose protagonists are mostly second and third generation members of the African Diaspora in Greece. Collected by Døcumatism, their stories highlight the problems of integration linked to their marginalized trajectories. The resulting archive of audio-visual material represents the first attempt to document the history of the African community in Greece during the twentieth and twenty-first century, as an integral part of the national narrative and Greek history. Beyond their role as protagonists, members of the AfroGreeks are also artists and co-creators of the ongoing collective community project.
