Athens Residency Application
The Athens Residency is the flagship program of ARCAthens
Please click here to see some of the opportunities offered in our previous programs and details regarding Athens Residency.
Application for Athens Residency
Open Call Announcement: Monday, April 10th
Application Deadline: Saturday, June 10th
Announcement of Fellowships: Late June
Duration: Monday, October 2 – Monday, November 27 2023
IN THEIR WORDS
From ARCAthens Fellows after completing the program:
“ ARCAthens has truly been a game changer for me personally and professionally. I view this experience as another pivot point that has reshaped how I think about art, my curatorial practice and my world view. I came to Athens via this residency with the intention of learning more about the city and its art community, but I ended up leaving with more. I’ve develop a new network of friends and colleagues within the Athenian art ecosystem whom I look forward to continuing a deep and expansive dialogue with. I leave this residency with a renewed focus and urgency that will be a key catalyst that will drive the next chapter of my curatorial practice. I’m thankful to the ARCAthens team and board, for putting together a such a robust and thoughtful program for myself and Cullen. I have been forever changed!”
“ The residency provided by the ARCAthens changed the way I see the world and affirmed my beliefs in humanity. This venture to Athens was my first but hopefully not my last. The residency has provided me with relationships, ways of making work and thought processes that will last for a lifetime and offer new trajectories in my art making practice. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be the first of hopefully a long list of artists and curators to follow.”
“ I want to try to describe what it feels like to leave the United States weekly narratives of domestic inhumanities as norm. Where another Black Woman was murdered by police in her home in the state of my birth right before I got on a twelve hour flight to the other side of the world. What it is to be here now feeling so close to some kind of free. But I can’t really. I am and will be eternally grateful for the new dreams forming and refining from being here and being welcomed. I know now that I want to be free of deeply engrained thought that I can’t really be Free. It feels like a new desire that has fear falling off of it like drying petals.??
Last sunrise in Athens for this trip. Not the last Forever. I’ve had multiple conversations about the uniqueness of Athenian sunshine. Being from Los Angeles I’d like to think I know some things about sunshine. Here it’s been like some kind of radiant honey light. Inside and out. I’ve felt spoken to in my own silence here, by timing, by people, by archives, by art works, by sacred sites, architecture, slices of ancient narratives of human history. Eleni told me that Greeks have many words for the Sun. Yesterday I sat in my packed up room at Atopos and marveled at the behavior of the sunlight through the window. Spilling its spectrum all over me. Greeks have many words that hold the complexity of experience. There’s one about joy, pain, and transcendence that Antonis told me about. I want to be back here for so many reasons. Thank you, ARCAthens for altering my course it such a beautiful way. I am eternally grateful.”
“ Being an ARCAthens fellow was one of the most positive and fulfilling professional experiences of my life. The residency offered a multitude of unique opportunities to know a range of leaders in the Athens art scene and be exposed to some of the most significant ancient sites in the world. As a curator, it was both centering and inspiring to spend time with wide variety of Greek artists in their studios and have in-depth conversations with the curators, writers, and activists of Athens. I profoundly admire the work and dedication of this creative community and look forward to promoting what I have witnessed in Athens to the broader world.
I would highly recommend this residency to any artist or curator, but particularly someone seeking out an opportunity to reorient or “reset” their practice in a rich, urban environment outside the more well-trodden artworld routes. The more curious the individual, the more they will get out of the experience. ”
