Full Calendar

Pause, Fragment, Fold

Curated by Dr. Giorgos Kontis
Coordinated with Jennifer Nelson

Opening: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 | 18:00 – 21:00

Exhibition duration: 10 December, 2025 – 31 January, 2026

Opening hours: Wednesday-Friday: 15.00-19.00 Saturdays: 12.00-16.00

Closed between 22 December and 6 January

Where:
ACG Plaka Building, 17B Ipitou St, Plaka, Athens

Organized by:
The Visual Arts program at the Frances Rich School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,
Deree – The American College of Greece

About the exhibition

Pause, Fragment, Fold presents the outcome of a collaborative process between students from the Frances Rich School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at The American College of Greece, the Department of Fine Arts and Arts Sciences at the University of Ioannina, and the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton. Through a series of workshops, the students examined authorship, collective work, and dialogic artistic practice while also engaging with the ACG Art Collection. The exhibition foregrounds the fragment as a conceptual locus for rethinking form, narrative, and the conditions under which meaning emerges.

Engaging with the Kantian notion of schematism—the process through which a schema (form, shape) enables a concept to become sensible—the exhibition probes the conventional understanding that the schema follows the concept, serving not as its representation but as its vehicle. Pause, Fragment, Fold proposes an inversion of this trajectory: What if form were to precede concept? What if a schema were to arise first, not as a product of thought but as an open entity awaiting association, narrative, or conceptual articulation? Within this reframed logic, the fragment functions as a remnant or trace—seemingly empty, yet resonant with latent meaning. It is a shard of suspended stories, a part that gestures toward a possible whole without ever fully resolving into it. The fragment remains paused: incomplete but not inert, provisional yet charged with the potential to host new narratives and new conceptual formulations.

The exhibition further draws on Deleuze’s notion of the fold, positioning the fragment not as a discrete or isolated piece but as a point of continuous inflection. Here, the fold marks a moment within an ongoing development of form, where part and whole are not fixed oppositions but states that twist into and out of one another. A fold embodies both pause and movement—a holding pattern on the threshold of transformation.

Through works that test these conceptual thresholds, Pause, Fragment, Fold invites critical reflection on how meaning is produced, deferred, or reconstituted within artistic practice. By foregrounding the fragment as both vessel and rupture, the exhibition opens a space in which to reconsider the temporal and material conditions that shape creative processes today.

This exhibition is free and open to the public.

For further clarifications, please contact [email protected]

Participating artists:
Maria Adamidou, Konstantina Chatzouli, Evi Chondri, Elen Demirian, Nefeli Dimou, Maria-Louisa Dollete, Anna Giakoumakatou, Margarita Giannakopoulou, Xenia Giannoulatou, Theodoros Gkolas, Foivi Kainourgiou, Aristi Kouri, Anna Livieratou, Martha Marinou, Katerina Milesi, , Kostas Papapetros, Ioannis Sarris, Konstantina Sidera, Georgios Theodorakakos, Aggeliki Tsantila, Christina Tsaprailis, Veronica Vergou, Natalia Zara, L2 & L3 Winchester School of Art Fine Art Students (Painting, Sculpture & Printmaking), and selected works from the ACG Art Collection.

Exhibition Production:
Ana S. González Rueda, Katerina Milesi

Graphic Design:
Katerina Milesi

Visual Arts assistant:
Ioannis Sarris

Muhabbet is an initiative aiming at bringing together scholars, students, and people interested in the shared social history and cultural heritage of the East Mediterranean. We wish to hold discussions about our common legacies in an informal and friendly environment, like that of the coffeehouses, which originated in the Ottoman East Mediterranean, where people used to come together to develop amicable conversations called muhabbet.

The study of Ottoman history, considerably enriched in recent years, has been read mostly as a prologue to Turkish history, thus leaving the diversity of ethnic and religious groups under its umbrella at the margins of the political, intellectual, and cultural history of the empire. They were much more than that. They not only participated in the everyday life of the imperial state, but contributed considerably to the making of the empire’s multicultural heritage. Our initiative aims especially in creating dialogues for the study of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman worlds, considering the contributions of both the Ottoman elite culture as well as the various ethnic and religious groups of the empire to the historical and contemporary societies of the East Mediterranean.

After a successful first season in 2025, we intend to continue in 2026 our informal conversations on a variety of topics that will bring together people with mutual interests into an open dialogue in the spirit of a friendly chat or Muhabbet. The conversations will facilitate a “safe space” for discussing aspects of the East Mediterranean peoples’ experiences and encourage the understanding of Ottoman history as part of the history of peoples of the region.

Organizers

Ilay Romain Ors (PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University),
Catherine Boura (PhD in History, King’s College, University of London),
Elias Kolovos (Research Director, Institute of Historical Research, NHRF),
Anne McCabe (Research Associate, University of Oxford)

The Muhabbet initiative is endorsed by The Demos Center and the Institute of Hellenic Culture and Liberal Arts at the American College of Greece, the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation.

Muhabbet ‘26 Program

Tuesday, January 27, 2026, 18:30

Antoine the Fortunate (Nefin Dinç, 2020, Anemon Productions)
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Ayhan Aktar and Kalliopi Amygdalou
Moderator: Elias Kolovos
–in partnership with Cinedoc

Cotsen Hall, Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Anapiron Polemou 9, Kolonaki, Athens

Friday, February 13, 2026, 18:30

Centuries of Parenthesis and Wounds that Never Heal?
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Cengiz Aktar and Elias Kolovos
Moderator: İlay Romain Örs

ACG Plaka Building, Ipitou 17B, Plaka, Athens

Monday, March 2, 2026, 19:00

Archaeology, Museums, and Photography in the Late Ottoman Empire: Osman Hamdi Bey and Theodore Macridy Bey
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Bahattin Öztuncay and George Manginis
Moderator: Anne McCabe
–in cooperation with the Benaki Museum

Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Koumbari 1 and Vas. Sofias Avenue, Athens

Thursday, April 16, 2026, 19:00

“I laugh so that I don’t cry”: Coexistence and Imperial Collapse in Ottoman Greek Satire
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Kutay Onayli and Antonis Nasis
Moderator: Catherine Boura

Cotsen Hall, Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Anapiron Polemou 9, Kolonaki, Athens

Saturday, April 25, 2006, 11:30

Poli/Istanbul in Athens
A Muhabbet conversation between:
A Walking Tour in Palaio Faliro and muhabbet by Ilay Romain Ors

Tuesday, May 5, 2026, 19:00

An Ottoman Pompei
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Christine Philliou and Melike Sümertaş
Moderator: Elias Kolovos

ACG Plaka Building, Ipitou 17B, Plaka, Athens

Tuesday, May 26, 2026, 19:00

Greeks in the Ottoman diplomatic service
A Muhabbet conversation between:
Sinan Kuneralp and Catherine Boura
Moderator: İlay Romain Örs

ACG Plaka Building, Ipitou 17B, Plaka, Athens