The American College of Greece | The Kids are asking

The Kids Are Asking
what do we tell them?
Online Exhibition

The Visual Arts Program of the Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts of Deree – The American College of Greece, is pleased to present its Senior exhibition, The Kids are Asking – what do we tell them? featuring the capstone projects of 4 graduating students. Due to the global pandemic, the exhibition will be held online this year*.

For the capstone project, students completing the Visual Arts program spend a full year to research and realize a project related to their specific interests as emerging visual artists. Graduating students Nadia Elgazar, Aliki Papadimitriou, Alex Rokadakis and Eirini Velaora initially all planned large-scale physical works that explicitly involve space and the audience. The students have met the sudden imposed requirement to exhibit online with resilience and grace, finding creative ways to honor their year’s worth of research while quickly reworking their projects to conceptually reflect this particular format.

The Kids are Asking–what do we tell them? reflects the artists’ inquiries within conditions of extraordinary uncertainty. Exploring empowerment in the face of trauma; healing in the face of breakdown and environmental loss; creative and existential freedom–even under lock down–the exhibition confronts the viewer with open-ended questions. The kids (as they call themselves) offer brave and clear-eyed propositions, suggesting that they are, in fact, ready to answer.

* We hope you will also join us for an exhibition of their works in the ACG Art Gallery as soon as this becomes feasible. Stay tuned!

EIRINI VELAORA – Contemporary Vagina

Contemporary Vagina, installation art (2x1,20 meters) presented on video.

Contemporary Vagina was made to urge women to take charge of their bodies. I want to create an experience for the viewer inside a “contemporary vagina,” and at the same time I want to reclaim the power of my own vagina. By exhibiting the artist’s vagina, I’m freeing myself from the dominance of the patriarchal society and urge all woman to do the same.

ALEX ROKADAKIS – Distorted Memories

My work emphasizes the object as a material that, although its wear and tear is inevitable in the long run through its continuous use, serves as a record holding a personal emotional connection with its owner. In this way, a broken skateboard can become a personal antique.

NADIA ELGAZAR – Time (off)

Time (off) is a virtually interactive photograph of a largescale drawing consisting of myriad tiny faces. Though each face is different, the work is a self-portrait; completed in isolation, the repetitive drawing of faces became a reflective and compensating act. Zooming and scrolling through the work from their own position of isolation, the viewer can travel amongst a multitude of people either from afar, or in extreme intimacy.

ALIKI PAPADIMITRIOU – Tree

Tree stands as a universal symbol–a link between three realms: The deep underground, the material world we live in, and the vast immaterial universe. Reversed, with its roots above, and its branches growing downward, Tree represents the magical descent into the physical world.