Event Type : ACG

When: May 23, 2025 | 18:00-22:00 (Opening), Duration: 24 May – 28 June, 2025
Opening hours: Monday- Friday: 15:00- 19:00 Saturdays: 12:00-16:00

Where: ACG Art Gallery

Organized by: Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts,
Deree – The American College of Greece

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

About the exhibition

Recast in the mold of a taxonomic ordering of things, chronology becomes the alibi of time, a way of making use of time without reflecting on it. – Michel de Certeau (1986:216)

History can never be reduced to a simple articulation of how things truly were. Any such attempt at interpretation is doomed to submit history’s complexity to a totalizing, relentless positivism. If history were to be understood as absolute knowledge – if we were ever seduced by this possibility – it would be attainable only after its very end, after the falling of dusk. History is nevertheless living.

Walter Benjamin once defined history as remembrance. Remembrance is not a definite science, nor a settled affair: it intervenes, modifies, and redeems. It turns what presents itself with the semblance of completeness into the resoundingly incomplete, opening new territories and futures still to be charted. It transforms the reified image of the past into a dialectical one, what appears to be a closed-off, non-communicative object, into a process of object-formation: a constellation of memory and experience. In this understanding of history, something is irretrievably lost only insofar as it is not recognized by the present as its own concern (On the Concept of History, 1940). What artists perceive as their own concern from this history produces, and is produced by, their self-understanding as social subjects. A link and a break in time explores what members of the artistic community at The American College of Greece consider worth citing and reflecting on from the college’s history in a non-chronological, non-linear configuration. Drawing on their dual roles as artists and educators, as well as on personal and collective memories, participating artists offer a meditation on the past while alluding to the present and future.

This year marks 150 years since the college’s founding. In 1875, Mary West, a missionary from Boston, opened “The American School for Girls” in a restored mansion in Smyrna, driven by the idea of liberating women from illiteracy. From its relocation to Athens following the catastrophe of Smyrna, to its use as a military hospital during the Greek-Italian war, and its transformation during the German occupation, the college has undergone multiple redefinitions. In 1963, it moved to its current campus on the slopes of Hymettus in Agia Paraskevi; in 2012, the School of Fine and Performing Arts was renamed in honor of artist and benefactor Frances Rich (1910-2007). This exhibition reflects on these transitions, not as milestones in a linear progression, but as layered moments that form a constellation of lived, institutional memory.

Rather than imposing order, Eelco Runia proposes that historical understanding emerges through disruption – turning things upside down, pulling them apart, and “making a mess”. This approach involves self-questioning, where historians grapple with what they bring to the subject. In this framework, creating a mess becomes an invitation to open ourselves to the contingencies of history and its openness to the future – a way of fathoming discontinuity and unforeseeable leaps and bounds. As Runia writes, ‘the march of chronicity is interrupted, and past, present, and future start to play hide and seek’ (Moved by the Past, 2014, xiv). A link and a break in time brings together new works in various media by the faculty of the Visual Arts program at Deree – ACG, mostly created in collaboration with academic peers and students, and presented in dialogue with artworks from the ACG Art Collection and archival material. The exhibition explores the college’s long-lasting educational mission and its ongoing capacity to adapt. It interrogates how the college has redefined its core activities and values, particularly the evolving role of art education, while foregrounding notions of diversity, access, equality, freedom of speech, ecological consciousness, and connection to both the built and natural environments.

The exhibition is conceived as a collaged roadmap, visualizing the shifting field of arts education at the college. Centered on the development of student practices under the mentorship of experienced artists, the exhibition fosters collaboration, co-creation, and mutual learning, offering an alternative to the prevailing emphasis on individualism and competition that characterizes the current educational climate. What do aspiring artists need to learn, and how do faculty members’ practices and experiences shape their growth? How do educational legacies inform current pedagogies, and what values endure in today’s turbulent world?

The gallery becomes a testing ground and a platform for open dialogue, where multiple temporalities and perspectives converge. The creative and critical thinking skills embedded in art and broader educational practice foster a sense of hopeful transformation — our ability to act in the present and shape the future: after all, students have long been at the forefront of change. Through experimental and imaginative propositions, participating artists explore the vital role of art-making in shaping cultural imaginaries in response to entangled climate, political, technological, and humanitarian crises. Under a collaborative framework, this exhibition positions the art school as a responsive learning community that inspires solidarity, shared responsibility, and collective action.

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Participating Artists:
Dionisis Christofilogiannis x Elen Demiryan x Christos Dielas x Carolina Gadia x Theodora Hareras x Aristi Kouri x Giorgos Papazoglou x Giannis Sarris x Ainsley Silberhorn x George Theodorakakos x Preston Tsouanatos x Nikos Vagias x Alexandra Yaneva x Zhou Zhiye, Effie Halivopoulou x Nikos Falagas x Tim Ward x Konstantina Chatzouli x Natalia Zara, Zoe Hatziyannaki, Dimitris Ioannou x Evan Katsounis x Katerina Milesi, Giorgos Ioannou, Georgia Kotretsos x Jason Bonas x Maria-Luisa Dollete x Anna Giakoumakatou x Phoebe Kainourgiou x Fani Koulocheri x Phivi Nicolaou x Vaggi Sekifu x Natalia Zara x Zhiye Zhou, Michael Lekakis , Sigrid McCabe, Irini Miga, Jennifer Nelson x performances by student and faculty volunteers, Emer O’ Brien, The Frances Rich Estate, Oliver Steindecker, Takis

When:
Opening: Thursday 5 June, 2025 | 18:00-22:00
Exhibition duration: June 6-July 12, 2025 | Opening hours: Monday- Friday, 15:00-19:00, Saturday, 12:00-18:00

Where:
17 Ipitou St., Plaka, Athens, 105 57

Curated by
Dr. Tamara Chalabi

Organized by:
The Frances Rich School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,
The American College of Greece
And
The Demos Center,
The American College of Greece

About the exhibition

Clay and textile—two of humanity’s most ancient and eloquent materials—serve as profound witnesses to human experience. Through impression, weave, and mark, these materials preserve intimate traces of touch and intention, creating permanent records of gesture across time. This exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists from the Mediterranean, Middle East, and their diasporas who harness these materials’ inherent capacity for memory and testimony.

The relationship between clay and textile is deeply entwined in human cultural memory. From the impressed patterns on ancient vessels to the encoded narratives in traditional weaving, these materials have long served as repositories of cultural knowledge and technical innovation. This is most poetically embodied in the Sleeping Lady of Malta—a Neolithic clay figurine who’s carefully rendered drapery speaks to humanity’s enduring impulse to document both form and fabric.

The artists presented here extend this legacy, transforming these ancient mediums into contemporary testimonies of identity, displacement, belonging, and cultural preservation.

The selected works, including several new commissions, demonstrate diverse approaches to material testimony:

Paolo Colombo’s commissioned works for ITERARTE embrace the Chamba Rumal tradition—a 17th-century embroidery technique once practiced by Himalayan royal women—where silk threads transform muslin into intricate narratives. His signature visual language of lines, dots, and squares, originally inspired by Byzantine and Classical mosaics, finds new resonance through thread. The embroidered works extend his meditative practice into textile form, where each stitch echoes the precise geometry of his compositions while engaging with living craft traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

Iliodora Margellos engages deeply with embroidery’s dual heritage as domestic craft and tool of resistance. Her meticulously stitched works, developed over months of patient labor, break free from traditional grid structures to create emotional landscapes that reveal themselves differently from afar and in intimate proximity. Analepsis (After the Mares) exemplifies this approach, while “Hope, a Field of Poppies”—created in collaboration with INAASH through ITERARTE—connects her practice to Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon, acknowledging embroidery’s ongoing role as a portable medium of cultural preservation and resistance. Each stitch in her work becomes a meditation on nature’s forms and a testament to embroidery’s enduring power as both personal expression and political witness.

Majd Abdel Hamid in newly commissioned and existing work reuses works on fabric and embroidery, to underline the multifaceted dimensions of use, inviting the viewer to join him in rethinking notions of memory, trauma and psychological nuances as an ongoing archive of existence. His work transforms materials into records of human experience, challenging conventional approaches to documentation.

The ceramic works of Elif Uras and Tancredi di Carcaci investigate how traditional forms carry contemporary cultural tensions. Working between New York and Iznik—the historic center of Ottoman ceramic production—Uras creates wheel-thrown plate paintings that bridge ceramics and textile patterns, underlining female labor and class through traditional techniques and contemporary sensibility. Di Carcaci employs the ancient practice of spolia—the repurposing of architectural fragments—as a metaphor for our shifting relationship with the sacred, examining how contemporary forms of idolatry emerge from the ruins of religious imagery.

Francesco Simeti’s deeply layered works draw on social, philosophical, and environmental discourses, particularly exploring water’s dual nature through site-specific digital collages and textile installations. Through layered imagery that incorporates historical and contemporary sources, his works map the transformation of natural landscapes, using fabric’s inherent mutability to reflect on ecological shifts and human intervention.

Through a dynamic fusion of sequins, gouache, and graphite, Lydia Delikoura’s works explore the bonds between humans, creatures, and landscape. She creates harmonious spaces where shimmering elements—both natural and synthetic—interweave with themes of sisterhood and impossible love, drawing inspiration from classical mythology. This investigation extends into her ITERARTE collaborations, where paintings are transformed into functional objects like stools, challenging conventional distinctions between fine art and design while preserving traces of material evolution.

Through a dynamic fusion of sequins, gouache, and graphite, Lydia Delikoura’s works explore the bonds between humans, creatures, and landscape. She creates harmonious spaces where shimmering elements—both natural and synthetic—interweave with themes of sisterhood and impossible love, drawing inspiration from classical mythology. This investigation extends into her ITERARTE collaborations, where paintings are transformed into functional objects like stools, challenging conventional distinctions between fine art and design while preserving traces of material evolution.

Hale Ekinci transforms domestic textiles into repositories of immigrant memory, merging Middle Eastern and Western traditions through a distinctive process of repurposing family photographs. In her newly commissioned Under One Roof (2025) installation and earlier works like Travel Pillow Necklace (2023) and Apron (2022), she obscures faces with French knots and overlays traditional Middle Eastern patterns with contemporary Western symbols. Influenced by Turkish Oya—meaningful lace edgings on headscarves traditionally used by women for non-verbal communication—the piece features exaggerated, colourful crochet edges resembling paragraphs or letters, encoding messages in their own right.

Afsoon’s ceramic vessels navigate between function and storytelling, drawing on her transcultural journey from Iran through California to London Fools and Devils (2025) transforms traditional Persian vessels into contemporary narratives. Each piece merges cultural symbols with talisman-like elements, reimagining an ancient tale of innocence and temptation through the lens of diasporic identity.

Nuveen Barwari’s work materializes the complexities of Kurdish-American identity through textile interventions. In Cola and Chiya, she pairs references to Kurdish mountains with Coca-Cola imagery, creating a charged dialogue between traditional and contemporary cultural symbols. Her architectural window installations, constructed from four traditional Kurdish dresses representing Kurdistan’s regions, transform intimate garments into monumental structures that speak to both fragmentation and preservation of cultural heritage across borders.

Through these diverse approaches, clay and textile emerge not merely as artistic media but as active participants in the preservation and transformation of cultural memory. Each work serves as both witness and testimony, speaking to the enduring power of materials to carry forward human stories across time and geography.

Participating artists: Afsoon, Nuveen Barwari, Tancredi di Carcaci, Paolo Colombo, Lydia Delikoura, Hale Ekinci, Majd Abdel Hamid, Iliodora Margellos, Francesco Simeti, Elif Uras.

About Tamara Chalabi

When:
Opening: Thursday 5 June, 2025 | 18:00-22:00
Exhibition duration: June 6-July 12, 2025 | Opening hours: Monday- Friday, 15:00-19:00, Saturday, 12:00-18:00

Where:
17 Ipitou St., Plaka, Athens, 105 57

Curated by
Dr. Tamara Chalabi

Organized by:
The Frances Rich School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,
The American College of Greece
And
The Demos Center,
The American College of Greece

About the exhibition

Clay and textile—two of humanity’s most ancient and eloquent materials—serve as profound witnesses to human experience. Through impression, weave, and mark, these materials preserve intimate traces of touch and intention, creating permanent records of gesture across time. This exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists from the Mediterranean, Middle East, and their diasporas who harness these materials’ inherent capacity for memory and testimony.

The relationship between clay and textile is deeply entwined in human cultural memory. From the impressed patterns on ancient vessels to the encoded narratives in traditional weaving, these materials have long served as repositories of cultural knowledge and technical innovation. This is most poetically embodied in the Sleeping Lady of Malta—a Neolithic clay figurine who’s carefully rendered drapery speaks to humanity’s enduring impulse to document both form and fabric.

The artists presented here extend this legacy, transforming these ancient mediums into contemporary testimonies of identity, displacement, belonging, and cultural preservation.

The selected works, including several new commissions, demonstrate diverse approaches to material testimony:

Paolo Colombo’s commissioned works for ITERARTE embrace the Chamba Rumal tradition—a 17th-century embroidery technique once practiced by Himalayan royal women—where silk threads transform muslin into intricate narratives. His signature visual language of lines, dots, and squares, originally inspired by Byzantine and Classical mosaics, finds new resonance through thread. The embroidered works extend his meditative practice into textile form, where each stitch echoes the precise geometry of his compositions while engaging with living craft traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

Iliodora Margellos engages deeply with embroidery’s dual heritage as domestic craft and tool of resistance. Her meticulously stitched works, developed over months of patient labor, break free from traditional grid structures to create emotional landscapes that reveal themselves differently from afar and in intimate proximity. Analepsis (After the Mares) exemplifies this approach, while “Hope, a Field of Poppies”—created in collaboration with INAASH through ITERARTE—connects her practice to Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon, acknowledging embroidery’s ongoing role as a portable medium of cultural preservation and resistance. Each stitch in her work becomes a meditation on nature’s forms and a testament to embroidery’s enduring power as both personal expression and political witness.

Majd Abdel Hamid in newly commissioned and existing work reuses works on fabric and embroidery, to underline the multifaceted dimensions of use, inviting the viewer to join him in rethinking notions of memory, trauma and psychological nuances as an ongoing archive of existence. His work transforms materials into records of human experience, challenging conventional approaches to documentation.

The ceramic works of Elif Uras and Tancredi di Carcaci investigate how traditional forms carry contemporary cultural tensions. Working between New York and Iznik—the historic center of Ottoman ceramic production—Uras creates wheel-thrown plate paintings that bridge ceramics and textile patterns, underlining female labor and class through traditional techniques and contemporary sensibility. Di Carcaci employs the ancient practice of spolia—the repurposing of architectural fragments—as a metaphor for our shifting relationship with the sacred, examining how contemporary forms of idolatry emerge from the ruins of religious imagery.

Francesco Simeti’s deeply layered works draw on social, philosophical, and environmental discourses, particularly exploring water’s dual nature through site-specific digital collages and textile installations. Through layered imagery that incorporates historical and contemporary sources, his works map the transformation of natural landscapes, using fabric’s inherent mutability to reflect on ecological shifts and human intervention.

Through a dynamic fusion of sequins, gouache, and graphite, Lydia Delikoura’s works explore the bonds between humans, creatures, and landscape. She creates harmonious spaces where shimmering elements—both natural and synthetic—interweave with themes of sisterhood and impossible love, drawing inspiration from classical mythology. This investigation extends into her ITERARTE collaborations, where paintings are transformed into functional objects like stools, challenging conventional distinctions between fine art and design while preserving traces of material evolution.

Through a dynamic fusion of sequins, gouache, and graphite, Lydia Delikoura’s works explore the bonds between humans, creatures, and landscape. She creates harmonious spaces where shimmering elements—both natural and synthetic—interweave with themes of sisterhood and impossible love, drawing inspiration from classical mythology. This investigation extends into her ITERARTE collaborations, where paintings are transformed into functional objects like stools, challenging conventional distinctions between fine art and design while preserving traces of material evolution.

Hale Ekinci transforms domestic textiles into repositories of immigrant memory, merging Middle Eastern and Western traditions through a distinctive process of repurposing family photographs. In her newly commissioned Under One Roof (2025) installation and earlier works like Travel Pillow Necklace (2023) and Apron (2022), she obscures faces with French knots and overlays traditional Middle Eastern patterns with contemporary Western symbols. Influenced by Turkish Oya—meaningful lace edgings on headscarves traditionally used by women for non-verbal communication—the piece features exaggerated, colourful crochet edges resembling paragraphs or letters, encoding messages in their own right.

Afsoon’s ceramic vessels navigate between function and storytelling, drawing on her transcultural journey from Iran through California to London Fools and Devils (2025) transforms traditional Persian vessels into contemporary narratives. Each piece merges cultural symbols with talisman-like elements, reimagining an ancient tale of innocence and temptation through the lens of diasporic identity.

Nuveen Barwari’s work materializes the complexities of Kurdish-American identity through textile interventions. In Cola and Chiya, she pairs references to Kurdish mountains with Coca-Cola imagery, creating a charged dialogue between traditional and contemporary cultural symbols. Her architectural window installations, constructed from four traditional Kurdish dresses representing Kurdistan’s regions, transform intimate garments into monumental structures that speak to both fragmentation and preservation of cultural heritage across borders.

Through these diverse approaches, clay and textile emerge not merely as artistic media but as active participants in the preservation and transformation of cultural memory. Each work serves as both witness and testimony, speaking to the enduring power of materials to carry forward human stories across time and geography.

Participating artists: Afsoon, Nuveen Barwari, Tancredi di Carcaci, Paolo Colombo, Lydia Delikoura, Hale Ekinci, Majd Abdel Hamid, Iliodora Margellos, Francesco Simeti, Elif Uras.

About Tamara Chalabi

When:
14 – 19 July, 2025

Where:
International Olympic Academy, Olympia, Peloponnese, Greece

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About the seminar:

The Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and the Institute of Global Affairs at The American College of Greece (ACG) are delighted to announce the 5^th ELIAMEP-ACG Summer Academy, which will take place from the  14^th – 19^th  of July 2025 in Ancient Olympia, Peloponnese, Greece. After the success of previous editions, we are now inviting applications from emerging leaders and experts to engage in this transformative educational experience.

For further information and to apply, please visit the following  link.

The ELIAMEP-ACG Summer Academy has established itself as a prestigious cross-border initiative, bringing together graduate students, young professionals, and rising leaders from across the Mediterranean, Europe, and beyond. The Academy has fostered in-depth dialogue and analysis on complex global and regional challenges, empowering participants with the tools and knowledge to address issues at the intersection of geopolitics, geoeconomics, and international cooperation. Esteemed academics, policymakers, diplomats, business leaders, and journalists will guide participants through these critical issues.

Programme Structure and Focus

The 5^th ELIAMEP-ACG Summer Academy provides an immersive educational experience with a strong focus on leadership development in the Mediterranean context. Participants will engage in specialised workshops on conflict management, negotiation techniques, and international cooperation, acquiring practical skills while exploring the unique geopolitical and economic challenges of the Mediterranean region. Through seminars, lectures, and interactive sessions, participants will deepen their understanding of key Mediterranean issues and expand their professional networks, gaining valuable insights for future leadership roles in this dynamic region.

Key Themes of the 5^th ELIAMEP-ACG Summer Academy:

• Regional Security and Shifting Power Dynamics in the Mediterranean

Explore the evolving power shifts in the Mediterranean and the newly emerging status quo in the region.

• Europe’s Strategic Interests in the Mediterranean

Examine Europe’s broader strategic interests in the Mediterranean, focusing on its role and contribution to regional stability and energy diversification.

• From Climate Crisis to Conflict Potential: Destabilising Dynamics in the Mediterranean Region

Investigate the most pressing mid- and long-term challenges to stability in the region, highlighting the need for jointly addressing climate crisis, exploding demographics and collaborative resource management in a conflict prone region.

• Cross-Border Cooperation and Economic Integration in the Mediterranean

Address the opportunities and challenges of cross-border cooperation and economic integration in the Mediterranean, emphasizing regional economic stability, sustainable development, and synergies.

• Navigating a Polycentric World: Geopolitical and Economic Shifts

Analyse the involvement of global powers in the Mediterranean and their role in the dynamic reshaping of the region.

Interactive Workshops Include:

• Advanced Negotiation Techniques
• Public Speaking & Media Training

All sessions will be conducted in English. Applicants must hold at least a Post-graduate/Master’s degree in a relevant field and demonstrate leadership potential. The age limit is 35, and proficiency in English is required.

Target Participants:

• Junior political and policy practitioners
• Think tank researchers and analysts
• Civil society representatives
• Diplomats
• Journalists
• Graduate students

Required Documents (in English):

• Statement of Purpose (max 200 words), demonstrating the relevance of the Summer Academy for the applicant’s professional development.
• CV
• Proof of English Proficiency

Participation Fees and Deadlines:

• Early Bird Fee: €250 Deadline: 31^st of March, 2025
• Standard Fee: €350 Deadline: 30^th of April, 2025

The fees include accommodation (full board) and local transportation, but do not cover travel expenses. Merit-based fee waivers will be available for 3 (three) selected participants.

We encourage institutions, think tanks, embassies, universities, and international organizations to share this opportunity with eligible candidates within their networks.

For further information and to apply, please visit the following link.

 

Venue & Contact: The Academy will be held at the International Olympic Academy, located just a few hundred meters from the ancient Olympia site—a symbol of peace and international cooperation.

For additional inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

We look forward to receiving your application!