EMΣΤ Mentorship Programme

Open Call to Greece-based Artists for Applications

Deadline: 16th March 2025

EMΣΤ | The National Museum of Contemporary Arts Athens is pleased to announce the launch of the ΕΜΣΤ Mentorship Programme. The programme aims to foster opportunities for long-term exchange and dialogue between emerging Greek visual artists and accomplished international contemporary visual artists and art professionals. The programme is aimed at artists from Greece with the goal of helping them to develop their practices and grow professionally. Finally, it aims to promote the visibility of Greek visual artists abroad.

Eighteen visual artists based in Greece are given the opportunity to spend significant periods of time – over the period of approximately a year – in creative conversation with internationally renowned visual artists on a one-to-one basis.

EMΣT invites nine artists – mentors from various disciplines, to offer their experience and expertise to emerging Greek artists.

We’re delighted to announce the nine mentors of this year’s programme:

Ivan Argote | Saskia Bos | Candice Breitz | Hera Büyüktaşcıyan | Marcus Coates | Mikhail Karikis | Michael Landy | Julian Rosefeldt | Penny Siopis

The programme starts in March 2025 with the selection of the 18 Mentees which will be followed by the Mentors’ first trip to Athens in the spring of the same year. This is an opportunity for the Mentors to meet their Mentees, be introduced to their practice and get acquainted with the city and space they work in. Following this initial meeting, the Mentors will have regular online meetings with their Mentees over a period of one year. The Mentorship Programme aims to foster a dialogue and exchange on both creative and production processes opening up possibilities for future collaborations and development of emerging artists.

The programme will conclude in the Fall/ Winter 2025-2026 with a 2-day meet up in Athens which will include public lectures, workshops and a chance for all the Mentors and Mentees to meet in person.

ELIGIBILITY

To participate in the call for applications, the artist must:

  • Work and reside in Greece full-time
  • Work within the field of visual arts
  • Have graduated from an art school in Greece or abroad
  • Have participated in a minimum of three institutional exhibitions (museum, kunsthalle, art centre, non-profit space, public or private foundation)
  • Have a minimum of 3 years of professional experience in the field of visual arts.

There is no age limit.

WHO WE ARE

EMΣT is the leading national institution for contemporary art and visual culture in Greece, and one of the flagship institutions in Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. It was founded in 2000 and for the first years of its existence, it operated as a nomadic institution. In 2015 it moved into its permanent premises, the former FIX brewery, a landmark industrial building of 20.000 metres built by celebrated Greek modernist architect Takis Zenetos (1926-1977) at the end of the 1950s. The pioneering building was renovated for the occasion and now boasts state-of-the-art facilities, eight exhibition spaces, two auditoriums, a library, archive, café, and restaurant and 360-degree views of Athens, including the Acropolis, in the heart of bustling Athens and within reach of some of the city’s most diverse and exciting neighbourhoods, such as Koukaki, Plaka, and Monastiraki. The Μuseum regards art and visual culture as a transformative element in education, knowledge production, storytelling and a tool for the advocacy of progressive and emancipatory values in society. Among the Μuseum’s founding goals is to promote innovative and experimental artistic movements and the production of ambitious works in audiovisual and multi-disciplinary media.

MENTORS´ BIOGRAPHIES

Through his sculptures, installations, films, and interventions, Iván Argote explores our relationships with others, power structures, and belief systems. He develops strategies rooted in tenderness, affection, and humor, creating critical perspectives on dominant historical narratives. His interventions on monuments and large-scale ephemeral and permanent public artworks propose new symbolic and political uses of public space. Argote studied Graphic Design, Photography, and New Media at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris. In 2024, Iván Argote was awarded the prestigious Plinth Commission by the High Line in New York and participated in the 60th Venice Biennale with a large outdoor installation in the Giardini and a film in the Arsenale. He also took part in the Bruges Triennale and Lagos Biennale. Argote has received several notable awards, including the Audi Talent Award (2011), SAM Prize for Contemporary Art (2013), the Grand Prize at the LOOP Barcelona Video Art Festival (2015) and was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2022. He has held solo exhibitions at major institutions, such as the Centre Pompidou, MALBA Museum, KØS Museum, SCAD Museum of Art, Berlinische Galerie, and Palais de Tokyo. His work has also been featured in the Cuenca, Mercosur, Thessaloniki, and São Paulo Biennales, among others. Argote’s artworks are part of prestigious collections, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MACBA (Barcelona), and Colección de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá).

 

Saskia Bos is an independent curator and critic of contemporary art, living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She writes on contemporary art and teaches at multiple universities. An art historian, critic and curator who did her Master’s degree in Art History at the University of Amsterdam on the oeuvre of Marcel Broodthaers, Bos was director of De Appel, center of contemporary art in Amsterdam for more than twenty years. She has a long experience in exhibition making, teaching and in arts administration both in Europe, Japan and the US. She is also the founding director of De Appel’s curatorial program, and has been the Dean of the School of Art at The Cooper Union, New York, between 2005 and 2016. During six years she sat on the Board of CIMAM, an international organisation of museum professionals world-wide, about which she published a book on its 60th year of existence in 2022.
Bos has produced many international projects and collaborated with many institutions: she curated the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Other projects include: 3rd Skulptur Biënnale Münsterland, 2003; 2nd Berlin Biennial, 2001; Biennale Sao Paulo (Dutch Commissioner) 1998; Venice Biennale 1988 (Co-curator of Aperto) and Sonsbeek ’86, Arnhem, The Netherlands. One of her first international projects was editing the catalogues for Documenta 7 in Kassel.

 

Candice Breitz (Johannesburg, 1972) is a Berlin-based artist whose moving image installations have been shown internationally. Most recently, her work has focused on the conditions under which empathy is produced, reflecting on a media-saturated global culture in which strong identification with fictional characters and celebrity figures runs parallel to widespread indifference to the plight of those facing real world adversity. She recently completed her ‘White Noise Trilogy,’ which she has been working on since 2015. Solo exhibitions of Breitz’s works have been hosted by Tate Liverpool, the Museum Folkwang, Kunstmuseum Bonn, the National Gallery of Canada, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthaus Bregenz, MUSAC / Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (Spain), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, The Power Plant, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and the Castello di Rivoli, among other institutions. In 2017, Breitz represented South Africa at the 57th Venice Biennale alongside Mohau Modisakeng. Her work is represented in the collections of MoMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both in New York), Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Canada, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk), M+ (Hong Kong), the Power Plant (Toronto), the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), the Pinchuk Art Center (Kyiv), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Fonds national d’art contemporain (France), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and MAXXI (Rome), among other museums.

 

In her multidisciplinary practice, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan (b.1984 Istanbul) unfolds ways in which memory, space, identity, and knowledge are shaped by deeply ingrained yet constantly evolving waves of history. The artist often references nature, archaeology, mythology and iconography, as well as architectural structures as the foundation for her works, closely observing their genealogies and the ways in which they shift and evolve over time. Through her site-specific interventions, sculptures, drawings and film, Büyüktaşcıyan dives into the terrestrial imagination by unearthing patterns of selected narratives and timelines that unfold the material memory of unstable spaces and the hybrid nature of things embedded within. Büyüktaşcıyan participated in several local and international exhibitions such as Villa Medici, Rome; Schwarz Foundation, Samos; EMΣT Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Tate St.Ives; 14thGwangju Biennale; Tate Modern; New Museum Triennial; The British Museum; 56th Venice Biennale National Pavilion of Armenia and 14th Istanbul Biennale. She lives and works in Istanbul.

 

Marcus Coates’ artworks include performances, sculptures, photography and video. Setting out to relate to others, Coates re-imagines the defining characteristics of relationships, testing actual and perceived boundaries as individuals, as communities and as species. New ways of relating are proposed and often put into practice. His approach is often functional with a social and ecological impact in mind. Coates often collaborates with members of the public, communities, organisations and institutions, as well as experts from a wide range of disciplines including; anthropologists, ornithologists, wildlife sound recordists, choreographers, politicians, psychiatrists, palliative care consultants, musicians and primatologists amongst others. Exhibitions include: Then, Now, Later, Nobel Prize Museum, Stockholm, 2024; The Directors, Artangel Commission, London, 2022; The World is in You, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2021; EKO 8, International Triennial of Art and Environment/ A Letter to the Future, Maribor Melje, Slovenia, 2021; Climate Care in the Digital Age, Vienna Biennale for Change, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2021; The Animal that therefore I am, OCAT Institute, Beijing, China, 2020; 24/7 Somerset House, London 2019; Animalesque, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, 2019; Wilderness, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany 2018; Animals and Us, Turner Contemporary, Margate 2018; As Above, So Below, IMMA, Dublin, 2017; Arrivals/Departures – sculpture commission for Utrecht Centraal Train Station, Netherlands 2017; Ape Culture, HKW Berlin, 2015; The Trip, Serpentine Gallery, London 2011; Dawn Chorus – Implicit Sound, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2011; Transformation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo 2010; Marcus Coates, Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland, 2009; Exposition of Mythology – Electric Technology, Nam June Paik Art Centre, Seoul, S. Korea 2009; Altermodern, Tate Triennial, Tate Britain 2009. Coates was nominated for the 4th Plinth Commission in 2014 and was the recipient of a Paul Hamyln Award in 2008. In 2014 he was the first recipient of the James Lovelock Commission and in 2009 he won the inaugural Daiwa Art Prize. Coates was Co-Founder and Co-Director of Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2005 – 2008.

 

Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-British artist working with moving image, sound, performance and other media. Through collaborations with individuals and/or communities located beyond the circles of contemporary art, and in recent years with children, refugees, support workers and people with disabilities, he develops socially embedded projects that prompt an activist imaginary and rouse the potential to invent hopeful and sustainable futures. Focusing on listening as an artistic methodology, and the voice as a socio-political agent he centers on themes of environmental and social justice. His projects highlight alternative modes of action and solidarity, while nurturing critical attention, dignity and care. Karikis is recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award 2024, and was shortlisted for Film London’s Derek Jarman Award 2016 and 2019, as well as the Anglo-Japanese DAIWA Art Prize 2015.
Group exhibitions include 54th Venice Biennale, (2011), IT; Manifesta 9, Ghenk, (2012); 19th Biennale of Sydney, (2014); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, IN, (2016); MediaCity Seoul, KR (2015); British Art Show 8 (2016-7); 2nd Riga International Biennale of Contemporary Art, LV (2020), 2nd Saitama Triennale (2024), JP and others. Solo presentations in 2024 include Songs for the Storm to Come, HOME Gallery, Manchester, UK; Acoustics of Resistance, Void Art Centre, Derry, N. Ireland; and Voices, Communities, Ecologies Cukrarna Centre for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, SO; Because We Are Together (2023), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens GR; Ferocious Love, Tate Liverpool (2020); For Many Voices, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), UK (2019-20); Children of Unquiet, TATE St Ives, UK (2019-20); I Hear You, De la Warr Pavilion, UK (2019-20); Mikhail Karikis, MORI Art Museum, Tokyo, JP (2019); No Ordinary Protest, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018); Ain’t Got No Fear, Turku Art Museum, FI (2018); The Chalk Factory, Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture, DK (2017) and Love Is the Institution of Revolution, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, LU (2017).
Forthcoming exhibition in 2025 include a career survey show at Kunstmuseum St Gallen in Switzerland, a solo exhibition at the Gulbenkian Centre for Modern Art, Lisbon and a solo exhibition at The Showroom, London.

 

Michael Landy was born in London, UK in 1963, where he lives and works. Selected solo exhibitions include: Welcome to Essex, Firstsite, Colchester, England (2021); DEMONSTRATION, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2017-18); Breaking News – Athens, Neon/Diplarios School, Athens, Greece (2017); Out of Order, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2016); Saints Alive, National Gallery, London, England (2013); Michael Landy: Four Walls, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England (2013); Art Bin, South London Gallery, London, England (2010); Break Down, Artangel, London, England (2001); and Scrapheap Services, Tate Gallery, London (1995). Landy’s public commissions include Acts of Kindness for the London Underground in 2011, and his first permanent public commission Lemon Meringue was unveiled at East Bank, Stratford Waterfront in London in 2024. Another public sculpture, a Humanitarian Aid Memorial, commissioned by the Disasters Emergency Committee and supported by Contemporary Arts Society, will be unveiled in Gunnersbury Park in London in 2025. Selected public collections include: Tate Collection, London, England; the Arts Council England; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Royal Academy, London, England; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN; British Museum, London; The Whitworth, Manchester, England; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Landy was elected as a Royal Academician in May 2008 and received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2021.

 

The Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt (born in Munich in 1965) studied Architecture in Munich and Barcelona (MA 1994). He is internationally renowned for his visually opulent and meticulously choreographed moving image artworks, mostly presented as complex multi- screen installations. Inspired equally by the histories of film, art and popular culture, Rosefeldt uses familiar cinematic tropes to carry viewers into surreal, theatrical realms, where the inhabitants are absorbed by the rituals of everyday life, employing humour and satire to seduce audiences into familiar worlds made strange. Rosefeldt holds a professorship of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 2011. He is perhaps best known for his film Manifesto (2015) with Cate Blanchett. Recent solo shows were held at: World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte (2023), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2022), Museum MACAN, Jakarta (2020), Sculpture Garden, Washington (2019), The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2019), Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2018), Musée d’Art Contemporain Montréal (2018), Auckland Art Gallery (2018), Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2017), HOW Art Museum, Shanghai (2017), Gallery Prague (2017), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2016), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2016), Sprengel Museum Hanover (2016) and ACMI – Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2015). Recent group shows include Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (2021- 2023), The Cindy Sherman Effect, Kunstforum Vienna (2020), Hollywood and other Myths, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2018), and 1st Riga Biennial (2018). Collections including his works, a.o.: Museum of Modern Art New York, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Goetz Collection Munich, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, CIFO – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Miami, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney.

 

Penny Siopis is a South African-Greek artist. She is also Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. Working across disciplines, whether with body politics, memory, migration, or the relations between human and non-human, all her explorations are characterised by a dynamic play between materiality and reference, chance and contingency, and personal and collective histories. Institutional solo exhibitions include Penny Siopis: For Dear Life. A Retrospective, EMΣT, Athens (2024); Moving Stories and Travelling Rhythms, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo (2019); ‘This is a True Story’: Six Films (1997-2017), Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2018); Time and Again: A Retrospective, South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2014), and Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg (2015); and Three Essays on Shame, Freud Museum, London (2005). Siopis has participated in the biennales of Taipei, Venice, Sydney, Johannesburg, Gwangju, Havana and Prospect.4 of New Orleans. Her work is in the collections of Tate; Centre Pompidou; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; EMΣT, Athens, among others.

GREECE 2.0

The EMΣΤ Mentorship Programme was initiated by EMΣΤ and forms part of Project SUB 6.4, “Actions to promote Greek cultural exports and strengthen the Greek cultural name by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens”, which is implemented within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.