Athens Residency Spring 2023
Residency Begins: Monday, January 16, 2023 – Monday, March 13, 2023
Linnéa Bake is a German-Swedish curator, writer and editor. She is one of the artistic directors of soft power, a non-profit art association and exhibition space she co-founded in Berlin in 2020. Among her other previous curatorial projects are “Re: Over everything which exists under the sky” (Gasworks, London, 2019) and “To Draw a Line” (Nuda, Stockholm/0fr Centquatre, Paris, 2019). Having graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2015 and the Royal College of Art London in 2019, in recent years she has held positions i.a. at the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (assistant curator), KW Institute for Contemporary Art / DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (project-based), and the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme (public programme and exhibitions). Her writing has been published by institutions such as Göttinger Kunstverein, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Manifesta 13, as well as magazines like Texte zur Kunst, Spike Art Magazine, Interview Germany, King Kong Magazine and Nuda. Exploring the potential of text, writing and publishing as curatorial forms, she works as a freelance writer and editor for a number of artists, advising them on their written output throughout the development of research and artistic concepts.
“As a curator and writer, I am concerned with the political conditions under which cultural spaces function and in which they intervene. Following this interest, I co-founded the non-profit art space soft power in Berlin in 2020: A collective curatorial endeavor, appropriating with its name a term that describes and uses the influence which ”soft” assets such as culture and art can have on political and economic spheres. Our ongoing programme is guided by the question how this notion can be productively challenged and reclaimed. My dissertation research at the Royal College of Art in 2018-2019 laid the foundation for this developing curatorial concern, focusing on the discursive context of the globalized biennial model, with all the tensions between the local and global, the center and periphery, as well as the political and aesthetic, which this format historically implies.”
Tariku Shiferaw is a New York based artist who explores mark-making through painting, addressing issues around space-making within societal structures. Group exhibitions include Men of Change, a four-year nationally traveling exhibition with the Smithsonian Institution (2019-2023); Unbound, at the Zuckerman Museum of Art (2020-2021); The 2017 Whitney Biennial, as part of Occupy Museums (2017); A Poet*hical Wager, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2017); and What’s Love Got to Do WithIt?, at The Drawing Center (2019). Solo exhibitions include It’s a love thang, it’s a joy thang, at Galerie Lelong, NY (2021), This Ain’t Safe, at Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn (2018); and Erase Me, at Addis Fine Art, London (2017).
Shiferaw participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2018 -2019), Open Sessions at The Drawing Center (2018 – 2020), LES Studio Program (2019 – 2020), and Silver Art Projects (2020 – 2022).
“I work in painting and installation art addressing issues around space-making within societal structures. In my ongoing body of work titled, One of These Black Boys, I explore mark-making through painting, addressing issues around space-making within societal structures. Every piece is titled using Hip-Hop, R&B, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, and Afrobeats. In appropriating songs created by the African Diaspora as painting titles, the work automatically inherits the references, identities, and history portrayed through the lyrics, while simultaneously referencing Western abstraction.
In my new series, Mata Semay (Amharic for “night skies”), I use mythology to address the concept of mark-making and erasure as a way to engage social constructs. Roland Barthes described mythology as a ‘phenomenon of mass culture’, a semiological system which can transcend factual systems. Mythology is an invisible force that shapes our imaginations and interpretations of our reality. Mata Semay is an immersive installation composed of imagined night skies and constellations using various symbols of ancient Africa, its diasporic cultures, and contemporary and intuitive symbols I feel drawn to. The sound consists of the hum of ancestral prayers, chants, and other abstracted sounds emanating from underneath the ceramic sculptures.”
A Sampling of Visual Memories from Spring 2023 |
We would like to share with you the statement from the Athens Residency Spring 2023 Fellows (Linnéa Bake & Tariku Shiferaw) regarding the cancellation of their public presentation at ASFA, standing in solidarity with the striking students and the pan-artistic protest movement in Greece. The public presentation is one of the Athens Residency’s eminent activities that allows our organization to give back to the Athenian community as we strive to reciprocate their trust and support of our mission
Previous image
Next image
Meet the Jurors of the Spring 2023 Athens Residency
Dawn DeDeaux is a nationally exhibiting artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her works have been presented at numerous museums including the Whitney, the Hammer, Ballroom Marfa, MassMoCA and a recent career retrospective at New Orleans Museum of Art. A major book on her work Dawn DeDeaux: The Space Between Worlds is scheduled for international release in November 2022 by Berlin-based publisher Hatje Cantz.
DeDeaux is also an educator and lecturer at numerous institutions including Princeton University, New York School of Visual Arts, University of North Carolina and Tulane University. She is a collaborator with scientific partners in areas of climate change, coastal erosion and contagious disease, including eHormone, Center for Bioenvironmental Research, and Tulane University School of Public Health. She is founding director of New Orleans artist residency Camp Abundance and serves on the Board of Directors of the international triennial Prospect New Orleans.
Marily Konstantinopoulou studied photography at the École Supérieure Nationale de la Photographie d’Arles (ESNP Arles) in France and visual journalism at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Apart from her background in photography, she holds a master’s degree in business administration (MBA Techno-Economic Systems) from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), as well as a master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh (MSc Environment and Development). The diversity of her background has inspired her to explore the collaborative potential between art, business and entrepreneurship.She was able to accomplish her aspirations at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she worked at MoMA R&D (2015-2016), the Museum’s department that borrows methods from science, technology and business to catalyze its curatorial and educational programs. Prior to MoMA, she worked as MP consultant on cultural affairs at the Hellenic Parliament. In 2017, she co-founded ARTWORKS, a civil non-profit company that offers funding opportunities to young Greek artists and curators through the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship Program. Since 2019, she has also been working as a business development associate for BLUECYCLE, a social enterprise dedicated to the recycling and upgrading of marine plastic waste generated from shipping and fishing activities. Marily is a recipient of the O-1B visa for individuals with an extraordinary ability in the arts, an IdeasCity Athens Fellow of the New Museum, a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece, a certified IPMA executive in project management and has recently received a diploma in Science, Technology and Society – Science and Technology Studies (STS) from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
ARCAthens Inaugural Curatorial Fellow Larry Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces globally. A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah is the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a global collective designed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class and celebrate the artistry and creativity of Black and Brown artists around the world. Ossei-Mensah was a contributor to the first-ever Ghanaian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Ossei-Mensah is the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAD), Detroit, and currently serves as Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where he curated the exhibition Let Freedom Ring in 2021. Recently, Ossei-Mensah co-curated the 7th Athens Biennale with OMSK Social Club, Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo’s first museum solo exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and Guadalupe Maravilla: Purring Monsters with Mirrors on Their Backs at the MCA Denver. Currently, Ossei-Mensah has Ghost of Empires ll on view at BEN Brown Fine Arts in London and Unmasking Masculinity for the 21st Century co-curated with Rehema Barber at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art.
Instagram: @larryosseimensah
Twitter: @youngglobal
We would like to thank our jurors for their service in thoughtfully and patiently considering the applications.