Greek Pavilion, Greece at Venice Biennale of Art - Greece Pavilion, Giardini, Castello - City of Venice
(Photo: )
Exhibition in progress from April 20th to November 26th 2024
The 60th Biennale Arte will open to the public on April 20. But on the 17th, 18th and 19th there will be the various events and collateral events that always enliven
suddenly Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place the day of opening to the public.
The title of the 60th edition of the Art Biennale is Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners Everywhere.
The exhibition will be divided into between the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and the Arsenale, including 213 artists from 88 nations. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
Go to the page of the 60° Venice Art Biennale
Curator of the 60° Venice Art Biennale
The 2024 edition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Greek Pavilion, Greece at 60th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Greek Pavilion is Xirómero/Dryland.
Artists: Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, and created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and FotisSagonas.
Curators: PanosGiannikopoulos.
Commissioner: Museum of Contemporary Art Athens.
Seat: Greece Pavilion, Giardini - Venice
Press Release of Greek Pavilion
Xirómero/Dryland,which will be representing Greece at the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos,and created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and FotisSagonas. The participation of Greek artists was curated by PanosGiannikopoulos. The work consists of a piece of agricultural irrigation equipment that synchronizes the installation’s sound, video and lighting in real time. The artists investigate the experience of a village festival by following its course from the village square all the way to the outskirts and surrounding land. More specifically, they draw their inspiration from the experience of the panigyria-local festivals- of mainland Greece, Thessaly and the area of Xirómero, in Western Greece, which lends the work its title.
The artists behind the work refer to water as a prism —a way of seeing and thinking—focusing on its scarcity or abundance, on how it is needed or wasted, as well as on its social connotations. The exhaustion of resources is linked here to physical and financial exhaustion. The work navigates the political potential of sound and music, and the impact of technology on rural landscapes and cultural diversity.
Thepanigyri conveys information and meaning through ritual and entertainment. It is connected to agricultural work; it is born from - but also begets - the community’s internal time cycle, which tracks the pace of irrigation and other agricultural tasks andhelps each community form an image of itself. But at the same time,it allows contradictory notions to coalesce: viewers become participants, on-stage becomes off-stage, and the performative gives way to the everyday.
This incessant interaction between ‘representation’ and reality is reproduced within the work itself. Xirómero/Drylandalso uses the particular architectural features of the Pavilion of Greece to associatively evoke images of agricultural warehouses and religious architecture that is so often thepanigyri’s backdrop. The watering equipment at the centre of the Pavilion definesa circular perimeter that is the actual space of the installation. The workserves to bring the outdoor space- where the community comes together, the village square, aplace of public assembly - indoors. As the watering system comes on, it initiates a specific rhythmical pattern,measuring time like a clock or a cassette tape playing, suggesting specific routes for the viewers to follow andencouraging viewpoint shifts along the way. Xirómero/Dryland steers clear of an aesthetic approach, emphasizing instead the emotional immediacy of the encounter with objects, sounds and images.
By observinggender relations in the context of the panigyri,we can examine the various possibilities of presenting the self, the different versions of femininity and the manner in which the female body is either revealed or concealed, but also the ambivalent gesture bythe subject thatchooses to withdraw, opting for absence and exclusion from the festivities.
Xirómero/Dryland attempts to create associations between a geographically contextualized experience and the global condition; to facilitate shifts of perspective between dominant and marginalized cultural subjects as a means of opening up a liminal space for the emergenceof new meanings.
*Xirómero [ksirˈomero], a historic area of Aetolia-Acarnania, is known for its festivals. Today, it isone of the municipalities inthe regional unit of Western Greece.
Research for the purposes of the installation Xirómero/Dryland that will be representing Greece at the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and conducted in the context of the Margaroni Residency by Onassis AiR Fellows interdisciplinary artist and composer Thanasis Deligiannis, and dramaturgeand philologist Yannis Michalopoulos. Both brought together a team thatincludes visual artist and filmmaker Elia Kalogianni, photographer and documentary filmmaker Yorgos Kyvernitis, sound engineer and designer Kostas Chaikalis, and visual artist and architect FotisSagonas.
The project and its presentation in Venice have been funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. EMΣT/National Museum of Contemporary Art Athensis the commissioner of Greece’s national participation and in charge of planning, production and promotion. PanosGiannikopoulos is the curator of the Pavilion of Greece.
Greece’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition ‐ La Biennale di Venezia is powered by Onassis Culture. The project is also supported by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Athens-Epidaurus Festival and the Greek National Tourism Organization. Support from ARTWORKS was provided through a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Additional support was made possible by NEON Culture and Development Organization, by Outset and the Qualco Foundation. AEGEAN is the official air carrier sponsor and the project has been placed under the auspices of the City of Xirómero.
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except April 22, June 17, July 22, September 2, September 30, October 31, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.2728329
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale
of Venice |
