Για την Ελληνική Εκδοχή

In the context of the #OccupyAtopos #AlexisFidetzis #RevoltingBodies / Exhibition II, ATOPOS invites the creators Persefoni Myrtsou and Eva Giannakopoulou with the screening of their video episodes ”The Brides of Maltepe”.

Persefoni Myrtsou and Eva Giannakopoulou will present in the Greek Film Archive a retrospective of their four episodes of The Brides of Maltepe.
After the screening, a conversation between the creators and the audience will follow, moderated by the curator Alexis Fidetzis.

The Brides of Maltepe, an ongoing since 2015 work, is a series of consecutive self-standing video episodes. The Brides of Maltepe seek to explore verbal transcriptions of relationships and confessions evolving around four families in Greece, Turkey and Germany. Eva Giannakopoulou and Persefoni Myrtsou live between three countries and as observers and circumstantial protagonists they attempt an introspective process, examining stereotypical and prevailing structures of transnational love and maverick forms of partnership. The two women find themselves in a process of constant documentation of their personal lives, and those of their partners, children, and
families. Adopting formats inspired by Greek and Turkish reality shows and soap operas, they expose with sarcastic moods their attitudes towards nationalism, sexuality, feminism and conventional notions of biography.
Persefoni and Eva have long ago abandoned their children’s strollers, which they were using to go around their different research-fields, as their sons are now older and don’t need them anymore. They however still continue, with infinite interest, to expose their personal archives in order to establish a purple Aegean, that will constitute the nucleus for more “fertile” and “wet” bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey.

Wednesday 2 February / 19:10
Attendance 18:30
Greek Film Archive (Tainiothiki Tis Ellados) / Iera odos 48 & Megalou Alexandrou 134-136, 104 35 Keramikos, Athens

Admission Free / order of priority – according to your time of arrival you will be given a free ticket.

⚠️Trigger Warning⚠️

*for your entrance to the Greek Film Archive you will need to present one of the following documents and a photo ID (identification card or passport): Vaccination certificate valid at least 14 days or Medical certificate of a COVID19 infection valid up to 3 months. Also the use of protective mask is mandatory for all visitors.

About Persefoni Myrtsou:
She is a feminist, mother, visual & performance artist, and anthropologist born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a BA in Fine Art (Glasgow School of Art) and an MA from the Institute of Art in Context (UdK Berlin). Persefoni has exhibited and performed in various conditions and locations, among others in: XIV BJCEM Skopje (2009),  Baumwollspinnerei Leipzig (2010), Museum der Dinge Berlin (2011), Excentricités 6 Performance Festival Besançon (2015), Şehitlik Mosque Berlin (Solo Show, 2015), Benaki Museum Athens (“Equilibrists” 2016), Athens Biennale OMONOIA (“GOMENES”, 2016), Jewish Museum Berlin (“Blue Room”, 2018), MOMus (Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival, 2019), performistanbul (Tanja Ostojić’s Mis(s)placed Women, 2021). In her work Persefoni is working on de-nationalizing dominant narratives regarding the nation state – migration binary through practices of subversion, cultural appropriation and humor, but also through nomadic thinking, memory work, community building and the female-queer body as an agent for disruption. She often performs her work and research findings as her Turkish alter ego, Ayşenur. Currently she is a doctoral student at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin. In her PhD she is researching artists’ migration through the perspectives and everyday practices of artists in Istanbul, Athens and Berlin and through her own autoethnographic reflections. In the last couple of years, she is engaged with peace and care activism in the Greece-Turkey context. She spends most of her time in Istanbul with her partner and their son.

About Eva Giannakopoulou:
Eva Giannakopoulou, grew up in Ithaca, Greece and she is currently residing in Athens where she works. In the past she has lived in Naples, Barcelona, Istanbul, and Berlin. She has presented performances at various unconventional sites, including beaches, squares, rivers, parks, and impromptu stages in public space. Her work has been exhibited at museums, institutions, galleries, and festivals, including the Onassis-Stegi Foundation (Kin Baby, FUTURE N.O.W, 2021), the Benaki Museum (“The Same River Twice”, 2019; “The Equilibrists”, 2016, both curated and organized by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation), the Kultursymposium Weimar (2019), the Goethe-Institut Athen (“Weasel Dance”, 2019), the Athens Biennale AB6: ANTI (2018), the Athens Biennale AB5to6: OMONOIA (2016), the Material Art Fair (Mexico City, 2017), the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Berlin, “Autonomy Help ME!”, solo exhibition, 2015), MPA-B (Berlin, 2014 and 2015), Action Field Kodra (Thessaloniki, 2012), and the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation (MIET) Thessalo-niki Center (at a parallel event of the third Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2011). She has co-curated and co-organized numerous art projects and performative events, while in 2013-2014, she was a co-labourer of the MPA-B (Month of Performance Art, Berlin). In 2019 she co-founds “Most Mechanics Are Crooks”, an artistic and curatorial band that aims to reclaim insincerity as a tool of progressive discourse. She is a PhD candidate at the ASFA (Athens School of Fine Arts), since 2020.