Για την Ελληνική Εκδοχή

Eleni Riga, invited curator and curator of Office of Hydrocommons of ATOPOS cvc, participates in the conference ”Some Like It Hot”, organized by the academic journal Parse Journal at the University of Gothenburg, from 12 to 14 November 2025.

Her contribution focused on the exhibition Hyperhidrosis: Sweating Together, co-organized by ATOPOS cvc and the Bath House of the Winds – Museum of Modern Greek Culture, and was presented in dialogue with the artist and exhibition participant Elektra Stampoulou.

More information about the conference

Below the description of their contribution:

Curator Eleni Riga (Office of Hydrocommons), and artist and PhD candidate Elektra Stampoulou present a joint exploration emerging from their collaboration within Hyperhidrosis: Sweating Together, exhibited at the Bath House of the Winds–Museum of Modern Culture, the only preserved Ottoman bath in Athens. The presentation considers sweat as a lens to examine social, environmental and bodily ecologies.

Riga situates the Ottoman bathhouse as a model of collective care, resilience and inclusion, where bodies and communities coexist in cycles of shared attention and repair. Drawing on the Mediterranean as an embodied and critical geography, Hyperhidrosis examines how historical architectures of slowness, cyclicality and interdependency might inform contemporary practices of solidarity and resistance in an overheated world. By revisiting these shared spaces of heat, the exhibition interrogates infrastructures of labor, exclusion and ecological inequality, envisioning sweat as both a medium and metaphor for interdependence.

Stampoulou’s ongoing research project thirsty towels explores the olfactory politics of sweat in contemporary Athens, and the shifting smellscapes of our bodies. Through post-qualitative fieldwork—interviews, participatory distillation and infusion workshops, and experiential storytelling—she examines the contexts in which sweat is deemed acceptable, regulated, or abject. Ranging from heatwaves, labor-intensive environments, and gyms to crowded transport and raves, practices of de- and re-odorization highlight how the scent of sweat intersects with class, ethnicity, age, and personal preference. The project attempts a decentralized account, generating an olfactory archive, sculptures, written reflections on deodorization, hygiene and etiquette, inviting participants to reconsider how our bodies are characterized and classified according to their scent, and the dynamics between olfaction, labor, culture, and bodily presence.

Together, they engage sweat as a radical, sensorial language of interconnection, and approach shared embodiment, heat and scent as new pathways towards solidarity, imagination and social and environmental care.