RESTLESS GEOGRAPHIES

This section focuses on migration, exile, displacement, and the instability of borders, as well as on cultural shifts reflecting the transformative changes that have shaped Greece and the wider region in which it is situated over the past 25 years.  Moving from the optimism surrounding the euro and the 2004 Olympics, the country entered a prolonged (almost decade-long) period of economic crisis marked by austerity, political upheaval, and social and economic precarity, while the migration crisis of 2015 repositioned the country as a frontline between Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa. Drawing on the lived realities of the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Europe, and the Balkans— regions historically shaped by war, colonialism, exchange, labour, trade, and forced movement—the section explores the emotional and political dimensions of belonging, aspiration, estrangement and dominant narratives. Through fragmented identities and experiences of geopolitical rupture and cultural change, the artists reflect on how geography itself remains unstable, contested, and continually redefined by movement, crises, and shifting historical narratives.