Athens Residency Spring 2026
Residency Begins: February 2 – April 23, 2026
Meet the Fellows of the Spring 2026 Athens Residency
Mari Spirito is Executive Director, Curator of Protocinema, a trans-regional arts organization based in New York with international operations, founded in 2011 which explores shared human experiences uniting all of us.
Spirito curated The Substance With Which The Future Is Made, inaugural 6-month public video art program, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, 2025. She runs Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series mentorship program, launched in 2015, and is faculty, AfterSchool Special, RISD Rhode Island School of Design from 2023. Spirito’s practice is guided by a vested interest in ingenuity and resourcefulness, in 2020 and 2021, she innovated a group exhibition across multiple cities titled A Few in Many Places featuring artists’ neighborhood interventions in Philadelphia, Beirut, Berlin, Bangkok, Seoul and Istanbul. She curated Art Basel’s Conversations program from 2013 to 2018, and was director, 303 Gallery, 2000-2012. In 2023-24, she curated The Myth of Normal, a Celebration of Authentic Expression, Massart Museum, Boston, served Jury for Member, Mamut Art Project, Istanbul 2025; Advisor, 2nd Mardin Biennial, Turkey, 2012; currently is Vice President, Board of Trustees of Participant Inc; Board of Directors, ArteEast, New York and Advisory Committee of The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery York University, Toronto.
Protocinema is a non-profit arts organization that collaborates with artists and institutions to create artworks exploring the shared human experiences that connect us all. We build relationships across local and international contexts bringing together individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. With a presence in both the U.S. and Turkey since 2011 Protocinema advances this urgent and nuanced work through commissions, exhibitions, public programs, Protocinema Emerging Curator Series (PECS) mentorship program, Protozine exhibition texts and Protodispatch, our monthly digital publication. These initiatives are rooted in our belief in the common ground where we live, gather and grow.
“I am interested in the aesthetics, narrative devices, performative histories, and media artifacts of mainstream audiovisual culture that have unintentionally created openings for queer spectators to project their desires, fabulating selves and worlds that could have been.
In my practice, which spans film, video, text, and live performance, I build worlds where queerness is the norm, not the exception; worlds where queer Arabs are strong, outspoken, and unapologetic storytellers, at once products of and traitors to a media apparatus that seeks to render them invisible.
Through research, collaborations and formal experimentation, my work imagines new afterlives for the formats, aesthetics, and technologies of popular culture by taking advantage of moments when it fails to fully assimilate its audiences, producing gaps or malfunctions that open space for alternative imaginaries.
I like to think of my body of work as a proposal for a counter-history of audiovisual culture, shaped by the desires, interpretive labors, and embodied modes of engagement of those who have been systematically excluded from the screen, despite constituting a loyal fan base for the entertainment industry.”
Spring 2026 Athens Residency Public Presentation
Program Report
