What is the individual’s position in relation to society? Where do the personal and communal intersect? How does apartness shape experience? A new exhibition by the Hellenic American Union and Athens Pride 2023, uses visual art to explore the concept of individuality in today’s world.
From Thursday, May 25 to June 24, 2023, Athenians and visitors to the Greek capital will have the opportunity to visit the group visual arts exhibition Alone in a Crowd, which will be hosted at the Hellenic American Union’s Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas Gallery at Massalias 22, in the heart of the city.
Organized by the Hellenic American Union in conjunction with Athens Pride 2023, and curated by art critic Andrea H. Gilbert, the exhibition invites twelve visual artists—Antonakis, Despina Christou, Alexandros Georgiou, Mark Hadjipateras, Alex Kat, Marilia Kolibiri, Andreas Lyberatos, Deanna Maganias, Alexandros Simopoulos, Angel Torticollis, Theo Vranas, and Maria Zervos—working in a variety of media, to examine the concept of individuality in today’s world.
“Alone in a Crowd explores the position of the individual in relation to the social whole,” notes Gilbert in her introduction to the exhibition catalogue. “Twelve artists navigate the emotional and physical intersections of the personal and the communal, the private and the public, as well as manifestations of interiority and exteriority – across a tortuous, often inhospitable, terrain. They explore the conditions of solitude, isolation, and alienation to reveal that this apartness is not necessarily, or exclusively, painful. Rather, it provides a space for introspection, independence, self-affirmation, and, finally, the empowerment of uniqueness.”
At 18:00 on Tuesday, May 30 and Tuesday, June 20, curator Andrea Gilbert will conduct free guided discussions, open to the public. Prior reservations are required, at culture@hau.gr.
Alone in a Crowd Participating Artists
Antonakis
Despina Christou
Alexandros Georgiou
Mark Hadjipateras
Alex Kat
Marilia Kolibiri
Andreas Lyberatos
Deanna Maganias
Alexandros Simopoulos
Angel Torticollis
Theo Vranas
Maria Zervos
Deanna Maganias (2008) You Live With Someone Called By Your Name [Photographic print]. Courtesy: the artist and Rebecca Camhi Gallery.
In You Live With Someone Called By Your Name, a neon installation at the National Theatre (Rex) in central Athens, Deanna Maganias examines the situation we face within ourselves in life where we play out roles of our character. The sentence stresses the duality within the self, as one stands apart from the image in the mirror.
Alexandros Georgiou (2019) Blue Alone With Many [Oil on canvas]. Courtesy: the artist and Rebecca Camhi Gallery.
Alexandros Georgiou presents oddity and otherness with such familiarity that the divergent becomes the norm in the fantastical spaces of his paintings. The dreams of the sleeping man in Blue Alone With Many are besieged by a host of creatures that could be the bearers of either pleasure or pain.
Maria Zervos (2010) Bon Voyage [HD video]. Courtesy: the artist and Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.
The film Bon Voyage by Maria Zervos follows the journey of a woman within a phantasmagoric landscape of acrobatics, magic tricks, and spectacles, on a visionary passage from the confines of culture into the limitlessness of nature. Lines of Zervos’s poem Nanno act as a prologue to the film’s iconography.
Marilia Kolibiri (2023) The Pose of the Decade [Oil on canvas]. Courtesy: the artist.
The ultimate manifestation of self-reflection turned self-obsession, the selfie is solitude ritualized and shared for consumption by the anonymous crowd. In The Pose of the Decade, Marilia Kolibiri portrays the cellphone as the object of desire, completely overwhelming its subject, the woman.
