Headless Jacobin, Alexis Fidetzis (3D modeling & printing: Christos Fousekis), photos by Panos Kokkinias

Για την Ελληνική Εκδοχή

ATOPOS cvc inaugurates the first part of the #RevoltingBodies physical exhibition.

For the programme of #OccupyAtopos and with reference to the 200th anniversary of the Greek revolution, the artistic director of ATOPOS cvc, Vassilis Zidianakis, invites artist, historian, and researcher Alexis Fidetzis to curate the hybrid, ongoing project #RevoltingBodies.  The project aims to integrate the Greek Revolution into a broader dialogue about the revolutionary phenomenon that to an extent defined modernity, immersing into the stories of the bodies upon which both the revolutionary action and the mythologies around it are imposed.

Fidetzis transforms the neoclassical building at Salaminos 72 street into the Revolutionary Headquarters of Language and Image. The exhibited artworks are semiotic references to revolutionary moments and narratives. These artworks do not constitute an aesthetic representation of the history of the notion of revolution, instead they present more of an outline of the methods through which contemporary societies metabolize the revolutionary imaginary. A series of pencil sketches coexist with large-scale prints, creating wall installations. These artworks refer to gendered and racial identities of the revolutionary bodies while at the same time they highlight the questionable lust for glorification in post-revolutionary societies. The statue of a beheaded Jacobin on a pedestal will dominate the inner courtyard of the ‘Revolutionary Headquarters’ and will be a constant reference to the violence imposed by and on the revolutionary bodies. While the library of Atopos has been occupied by a video installation, which bombards the viewer with institutional and non-institutional representations of revolutionary actions.

The whole motley iconography will be homogenized aesthetically, through a specific color filter, a particular green shade that makes its appearance in subcutaneous aspects of the history of the revolutions, from the reference to Robespierre as a spirit as pure as the green of the sea to the turquoise green  ”Faberge” eggs of the Romanov estate that Stalin secretly sold to Western tycoons.

EXHIBITION I / Duration: October 6 – November 26, 2021

Free entrance, registration is required as there is a limited number of visitors allowed (up to 5 visitors per hour)

Days & Hours: Wednesday: 16:00 – 20:00 (in the presence of the artist & curator Alexis Fidetzis)
Thursday & Friday: 12:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 16/10, 23/10, 6/11, 20/11, 12:00 – 16:00 (in the presence of the artist & curator Alexis Fidetzis)

Exhibition Floor Plan

Along with the exhibition the following events will take place:
23 & 24 October: Decolonize Hellas / workshop
3 November: Campus Novel / lecture performance
6 November: Aggeliki Bozou / performance, video
17 – 20 & 24 – 26 November: Konstantinos Kotsis / installation

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AlexisFidetzis
was born in Athens where he currently resides and works. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and the Munich Kunstakademie while he got his MFA at the Pratt Institute in New York where he focused on research-based artistic practices. He is currently completing his second Master’s Degree in Modern Greek history at the School of Philosophy at the University of Athens. He is also a doctoral candidate at ASFA. Fidetzis uses historical research as a means of artistic creation in an effort to diagnose current social, cultural, and political issues. He is interested in the institutional management of collective social trauma alongside the ways in which power structures shape our common past.

#OccupyAtopos
Is the artist residency programme of ATOPOS cvc. The main focus of the program is on interdisciplinary research and the study of contemporary visual culture of the human body.  It will emphasize the embodied experience and the narrated character of the gendered and racialized body, personal and collective trauma, memory, systems of embodied cognition, as well as the relationship between the body, social justice, and ecology. Its mission is to observe and support the creative process of emerging artists, designers, curators and thinkers. The word ‘atopos’, from the ancient Greek word ”ἄτοπος”, means out of space and out of the way and refers to that which is strange, unwonted, eccentric and disgusting, but also to the foul and the unclassifiable.

The program is organized with the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
* for the duration of this program, the physical space of ATOPOS at Salaminos Street 72, Metaxourgeio, will be operating in accordance with the government’s precautionary measures against COVID-19.