As the year-long cycle of exhibitions What if women ruled the world? draws to its end, EMΣΤ is organizing a festive weekend of concerts, performances, parties, screenings and the opening of the last exhibition in the series.
MUSEUM OPENING HOURS
SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER: 3.00 pm – 3.00 am
SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER: 11.00 am – 7.00 pm
EXHIBITION OPENING HOURS
SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER: 3.00 p.m. – 10.00 p.m.
SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER: 11.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.
FREE ADMISSION
PROGRAMME
SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER
A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (FAUX FINISSAGE)
3.00 PΜ – 3.00 AΜ
15.00: DOORS OPEN
OPENING solo exhibition: MARIA CYBER Portraits
2nd floor
Organized by Fivos Sakalis
Co-ordination: Yannis Arvanitis
Texts: Klara Tsoumpleka
Graphic design: Iliana Siarga
Lighting: Grigoris Sampanis, Kostas Svolis
16.00 – 22.00
GRACE SCHWINDT: When We Move
Durational performance throughout the building
Music: Nick Donoussis based on a concept by Grace Schwindt
Performers: Christine Assimacopoulou (soprano), Nefeli Anthidi (dancer), Anthi Damvouneli (clarinet), Myrto Grapsa (dancer), Vagia Kalantzi (saxophone), Eleanna Konstanta (soprano), Vasia Koutsilianou (dancer), Vassiliki Mazaraki (violin), Alkistis Misouli (viola), Ioanna Panagopoulou (percussion), Sofia Siora (trumpet), Katerina Skiada (dancer).
Artistic production: Yannis Arvanitis
Production: Anastasia Tsopelaki
Artist’s assistant: Mathilde Skylogiannis
Audiovisual co-ordination: Nikos Dimitrakakos, Dimitris Spanos
Text painting: Dimitris Kannas
Tecnhical support: Grigoris Sampanis, Vaggelis Filippas, Aimilios Petrikis
Audiovisual support: Manos Backline Services
Artists’ management: Peket Solutions LTD
Commissioned by EΜΣΤ
Special thanks to Athens Kallithea FC, ΕΜΣΤ partner, and Ted Philipakos.
22.00-23.00
CELINE GILLAIN
Live Concert from her recent album Mind is Mud
Ground floor foyer
Artistic production: Yannis Arvanitis
Production co-ordinator: Anastasia Tsopelaki
Audiovisual co-ordination: Nikos Dimitrakakos, Dimitris Spanos
Audiovisual equipment: AXON SOUND
Technical support: Grigoris Sampanis, Vaggelis Filippas, Aimilios Petrikis, Vaggelis Kiousis
23.00– 01.00
FO (aka Fofi Tsesmeli) DJ SET
Ground floor foyer
01.00– 03.00
NOCTURNAL SCREENINGS
With films by Bertille Bak, Nan Goldin, Tracey Moffatt, Penny Siopis and more
SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER
13.00-19.00
13.00
Never throw stones for no reason
Meta-concert musical performance by Anastasia Kotsalis and Michalis Kalkanis inside Chrysa Romanos’ exhibition on the 4th floor of EMΣΤ
The costumes are by the Greek haute couture brand 240791 by Eleni Kavvada
14.00
Premiere of Women in Time (2024) from Save the Dates, an Audiovisual Archive for Contemporary Art
Screening Room-Mezzanine
Screening special, created especially for the closing of the What if Women Rule the World? Series, consisting edited interviews with 30 contemporary female artists from Save the Dates: An Audiovisual Archive on Contemporary Art.
Experts’ Selection: Katerina Zacharopoulou
Video Creation: Sergio Zalmas
16.00
Never throw stones for no reason
Meta-concert musical performance by Anastasia Kotsalis and Michalis Kalkanis inside Chrysa Romanos’ exhibition on the 4th floor of EMΣΤ
The costumes are by the Greek haute couture brand 240791 by Eleni Kavvada
17.00
Screening Women in time from Save the Dates, an audiovisual archive for contemporary art
Screening Room-Mezzanine
18.00
It Starts with a Question, performative talk by Celine Gillain (spoken word, music), commissioned by EMΣΤ
Ground floor foyer
Artistic production: Yannis Arvanitis
Production co-ordinator: Anastasia Tsopelaki
Audiovisual co-ordination: Nikos Dimitrakakos, Dimitris Spanos
Audiovisual equipment: AXON SOUND
Technical support: Grigoris Sampanis, Vaggelis Filippas, Aimilios Petrikis, Vaggelis Kiousis
SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER
SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER
A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (FAUX FINISSAGE)
3.00 PΜ – 3.00 AΜ
15.00: DOORS OPEN
OPENING solo exhibition: MARIA CYBER Portraits
2nd floor
Organized by Fivos Sakalis
Co-ordination: Yannis Arvanitis
Texts: Klara Tsoumpleka
Graphic design: Iliana Siarga
Lighting: Grigoris Sampanis, Kostas Svolis
Maria Cyber is a pioneering figure in the Greek queer scene and one of the first lesbian activists in Greece. With a background in photography, graphic design, web design, and cinematography, her work engages with sexuality from an array of perspectives. In 2000, she launched lesbian.gr, the largest online platform for lesbians in Greece. By 2007, she had founded the country’s first queer film festival, the Outview Film Festival: Athens International LGBTQI Film Festival. Additionally, she established Mindradio.gr, Greece’s first interactive web radio, which received the 2008 Ermis Gold Award in the internet category.
Maria also introduced the prominent party series Cyber Dykes (1995-2006), which began as women-only events that transformed predominantly straight, male-dominated clubs into vibrant lesbian spaces. These parties were instrumental in creating safe spaces for lesbians in Athens, a city where the community remained largely invisible at the time. Maria played a key role in introducing queer practices, such as lesbian safe sex and the use of dildos, in a cultural context that initially resisted and stigmatized them. In recent years, influenced by her personal battles with cancer and diabetes, her work has acquired an even broader sense of intersectionality, extending beyond the sphere of sexuality to engage with the body at large, and draw attention to themes of fragility, healthcare access, and (dis)ability.
Maria’s book, A Lesbian Life, created in collaboration with Eirini Dafermou, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, and Krystalli Glyniadaki, and published in 2023, offers a personal insight into her life through stories and photographs. It features narrations of her childhood, her relationship with her father, the evolution of the lesbian scene in Athens, and her observations in queer capitals like Berlin, London, and Brussels. The writing is complemented by her extensive photographic material, documenting lesbian life over the years. The second half of the book focuses on these intimate portraits, balancing private moments with public realities and capturing both the more delicate and the more raw features of her subjects.
The exhibition Maria Cyber – Portraits offers a selection of images from her photographic archive, documenting lesbian life through the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Maria’s portraits eternalize intimate moments between friends and lovers that would otherwise remain fleeting. Many are playful; subverting traditional conceptions of gender and power, while others are calm and solemn; portraying tranquil, candid moments or piercing, direct looks into the camera. As an insider documenting her own reality, her photos often have a voyeuristic quality but are always marked by a sense of care and respect. Using tight frames and close-ups, Maria focuses on her subjects rather than the surrounding environment, creating a sense of proximity and connection. Even in more staged or performative images, she allows her subjects to shape the scene organically. As she herself describes her process: “I don’t capture the face; I capture the soul in one of its expressions.”
Maria’s chosen medium of photography engages in a dynamic dialogue with queer visual culture, foregrounding lesbian visibility. Her work immortalizes her subjects within a collective queer memory and contributes to a politics of the gaze, challenging us to reconsider notions of perception, power, memory, and representation. Her photographs serve as acts of resistance against erasure, capturing moments that might otherwise fade into oblivion. They form a visual archive of a community’s struggle for recognition, documenting not only the external appearance of her subjects but also musings of their inner worlds.
Her portraits showcase the wide range of queer existence, from quiet moments of introspection to loud, defiant celebrations. They are not mere images; they are historical documents that capture the essence of a time, a place, and a movement.
Until 26.01.2025
16.00 – 22.00
GRACE SCHWINDT: When We Move
Durational performance throughout the building
Music: Nick Donoussis based on a concept by Grace Schwindt
Performers: Christine Assimacopoulou (soprano), Nefeli Anthidi (dancer), Anthi Damvouneli (clarinet), Myrto Grapsa (dancer), Vagia Kalantzi (saxophone), Eleanna Konstanta (soprano), Vasia Koutsilianou (dancer), Vassiliki Mazaraki (violin), Alkistis Misouli (viola), Ioanna Panagopoulou (percussion), Sofia Siora (trumpet), Katerina Skiada (dancer).
Artistic production: Yannis Arvanitis
Production: Anastasia Tsopelaki
Artist’s assistant: Mathilde Skylogiannis
Audiovisual co-ordination: Nikos Dimitrakakos, Dimitris Spanos
Tecnhical support: Grigoris Sampanis, Vaggelis Filippas, Aimilios Petrikis
Audiovisual support: Manos Backline Services
Artists’ management: Peket Solutions LTD
Commissioned by EΜΣΤ
Special thanks to Athens Kallithea FC, ΕΜΣΤ partner, and Ted Philipakos.
Grace Scwhwindt’s performances occupy a space in between theatre, dance and the visual arts. In When We Move, a major performance newly commissioned for EΜΣΤ, the audience is invited to find their own paths through the museum to encounter the performers and Schwindt’s intervention in the space, which has been created in response to the exhibitions on view as part of the What if Women Ruled the World? When We Move creates an experience of time that interrupts our usual schedule of navigation in the museum and interrogates the dynamics of unexpected encounters. The starting point and ‘home’ of the performance is the escalator section of the building. This is also the place where the performers will return to regularly throughout the performance and there will always be at least one performer present in those spaces.
The performance is organised as a 12-bar blues composition, which allows the performers to follow a structure while at the same time leaving space for improvisation and for creating one’s own rhythm. Each section will consist of different elements such as melodies, sounds resembling breathing, movements and gestures as well as resting. The performers use these sections as an alphabet from which they are invited to create their own sentences. The performative vocabulary communicates a sense of self, and strength, inferring both vulnerability and trauma, resistance and gentleness. The feeling engendered is one of community and care and – ultimately – a sense of triumph in the face of obstacles.
The performers follow the first part of the composition in their allocated starting positions in the escalator section of the building. In the second part, the performers disperse into the rest of the building and the exhibition spaces. Following that, they choose which space or part of the building they will inhabit and use. When two or more performers meet, they interact with each other; they improvise, carefully ‘listening’ to one another and decide which section or sections to perform together.
Grace Schwindt was born in Germany and lives between London and Sicily. She works with sculpture, performance, drawing and film. Her work posits visual narratives that explore the effects of capitalist culture on the body and psyche of the individual. She analyses the role that bodies, language and objects play in the construction of history and memory. Her work often originates from specific research and conversations with a wide range of people, including activists, artists, musicians, politicians and her own relatives. Many of her works examine aspects of historical events with an emphasis on social relations. The different media employed are connected and intertwined, shapes from costumes reappearing in drawings while sculptures echo performative gestures.
Solo shows include: Defiant Bodies at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2022-23), Kunsthal Gent (2022), Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2019), A rose is a rose is a rose, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam (2019), MARCO, Vigo (2016), Tramway, Glasgow, The Showroom, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2014). Her performances have been presented by, among others: Volksbühne, Berlin (2019), The David Roberts Art Foundation, London and Museum M, Leuven (2018), Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam and Kaaitheater, Brussels (2017), the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the Block Universe Performance Festival, London (2016). Group exhibitions include: CondeDuque Cultural Center, Madrid (2023), Busan Biennale and Perfect Love, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2022), Refugee Series – Forced to Flee, Imperial War Museum, London, Mariner: a painted ship upon a painted ocean, John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton; The Arts Institute, Plymouth University of the Arts in Plymouth; Andrew Brownsword Gallery, University of Bath, UK (2021), Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945, Arts Council Collection, Touring Exhibition (2020-22). Forthcoming shows include: Museum M, Leuven (2025) and Kunsthaus Wiesbaden (2026). Public collections include: Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Kunsthaus Zurich, Teylers Museum (Haarlem), Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre (London), and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Hokuto).
Grace Schwindt is represented by Galerie Peter Kilchman Zurich and Paris.
Grace Schwindt’s performance has been made possible by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
22.00-23.00
CELINE GILLAIN
Live Concert from her recent album Mind is Mud
Ground floor foyer
Artistic production: Yannis Arvanitis
Production co-ordinator: Anastasia Tsopelaki
Audiovisual co-ordination: Nikos Dimitrakakos, Dimitris Spanos
Audiovisual equipement: AXON SOUND
Technical supprt: Grigoris Sampanis, Vaggelis Filippas, Aimilios Petrikis, Vaggelis Kiousis
Céline Gillain will be playing a live set of her most recent album Mind is Mud, the artist’s second. Mind is Mud researches the palliative power of rhythm and the dance floor as a breeding ground for new ideas and narratives. It explores the mix of conflicting feelings, depression and emotional confusion in the post-truth, post-pandemic era. Part acid cybernetic techno, part operatic choir, punctuated with biting sounds, Mind is Mud is reminiscent of 1980s dance pop with a carnivalesque house groove that’s sensual, pliable and devilishly funky.
Céline Gillain is a musician, DJ, performance and video artist based in Brussels working across the fields of experimental music, electronic music, as well as visual and performing arts. Her work explores the meeting points between the dancefloor, politics, the music industry, and storytelling, deconstructing the codes and hierarchies that govern them. Exploring the grey areas of the individual and collective psyche, her approach is one that aims to deconstruct the notion of genre, analysing how the very idea of categorisation is culturally built as a means of control and domination over ideas and bodies marked as others. Her work explores the meeting points between scenes that often don’t mingle, calling into question the codes and hierarchies that govern them, as well as their economies. In 2018, Gillain released her debut LP Bad Woman. Mind is Mud, Gillain’s second LP, was released in 2023. Gillain teaches Sociology of art at La Cambre School of Visual Arts in Brussels where she also co-founded a course dedicated to experimental music and sound art. She is a resident on Brussels-based online community radio Kiosk Radio.
23.00– 01.00
FO (aka Fofi Tsesmeli) DJ SET
Ground floor foyer
Fofi Tsesmeli (aka Fo) is a DJ, journalist and curator with a long career and specialization in electronic music. She has worked with festivals, producers, cultural venues/organisations and international DJs in events promoting inclusion and equality in music.
Fofi is the founder of HER project, a platform for the empowerment of women and underrepresented groups in music and one of the directors of the Athens chapter of shesaid.so, a global all-female community from across the music industry. She is also one of the founders of the digital ecosystem, Matterz, which focuses on creating safe, inclusive and accessible spaces for all individuals.
01.00– 03.00
NOCTURNAL SCREENINGS
With films by Bertille Bak, Nan Goldin, Tracey Moffatt, Penny Siopis and more.
SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER
13.00-19.00
13.00
Never throw stones for no reason
Meta-concert musical performance by Anastasia Kotsalis and Michalis Kalkanis inside Chrysa Romanos’ exhibition on the 4th floor of EMΣΤ
The costumes are by the Greek haute couture brand 240791 by Eleni Kavvada
Μezzo-soprano Anastasia Kotsali and musician Michalis Kalkanis invite the audience to a participatory musical performance, a meta-concert of early twentieth century chamber music. A fugue of musical collage/décollage –with double bass and voice– and a sing-along experience with Michalis Kalkanis’ quartet “Never throw stones for no reason” (sic). The boundaries between spaces are lost, just like in the works of Chrysa Romanos where irrational normality, comme–il–faux paradox, high heels, collage, décollage, zodiac signs and other heterogeneous references coexist. A musical palimpsest with repeated rhythmic patterns is gradually created, at whose end the audience and performers create a pop-up performance of chamber music.
14.00
Premiere of Women in Time (2024) from Save the Dates, an Audiovisual Archive for Contemporary Art
Screening Room-Mezzanine
Experts’ Selection: Katerina Zacharopoulou
Video Creation: Sergio Zalmas
Screening special, created especially for the closing of the What if Women Rule the World? Series, consisting edited interviews with 30 contemporary female artists from Save the Dates: An Audiovisual Archive on Contemporary Art.
The interviews feature iconic female from Greece and abroad, including Marina Abramovic, Ghada Amer, Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Mona Hatoum, Annette Messager, Eleni Mylonas, Shirin Neshat, Maria Papadimitriou, Leda Papakonstantinou, Chrysa Romanos, Penny Siopis, and Kiki Smith, among others. Through the edited sequence an open narrative unfolds, touching on issues of gender, identity, politics, memory, and ecology.
Save the Dates | An Audiovisual Archive for Contemporary Art, was created to preserve public television and radio broadcasts on contemporary art from 1995-2024 in order to provide a broad field of research. Until now it contains 756 records, fully documented and categorized to facilitate their access and viewing. ERT Greek National Television has granted the rights for free educational use of all the broadcast archives to EMΣT and Τhe Athens School of Fine Arts (ΑΣΚΤ), while a memorandum of cooperation between the two institutions was signed in 2023. The main sponsor of the Save the Dates platform is NEON. The educational activities and public programme implemented at EMΣT using Save the Dates is funded by the D.Daskalopoulos Collection. Save the Dates was spearheaded by artist and broadcaster Katerina Zacharopoulou.
16.00
Never throw stones for no reason
Meta-concert musical performance by Anastasia Kotsalis and Michalis Kalkanis inside Chrysa Romanos’ exhibition on the 4th floor of EMΣΤ
The costumes are by the Greek haute couture brand 240791 by Eleni Kavvada
17.00
Screening Women in time from Save the Dates, an audiovisual archive for contemporary art
Screening Room-Mezzanine
18.00
It Starts with a Question, performative talk by Celine Gillain (spoken word, music), commissioned by EMΣΤ
Ground floor foyer
Τhe performance is a tribute to all the artists involved during the 4-part, year-long exhibition cycle. For this, the artist takes on the role of storyteller in a hybrid talk that subverts the lecture format with political and intimate considerations, auto-fiction and wry jokes. Exploring the idea of female kinship, It starts with a question examines how the work and agency of contemporary women artists is closely intertwined with the history of those who paved the way for them. It starts with a question is a homage that aims to connect the dots between history and the future.
Céline Gillaine’s performance has been made possible by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
INFORMATION
During the weekend the admission is free.
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