Nikis Kanagkini Archive

AN ODE TO THINGS. NIKI KANAGINI. RETROSPECTIVE

2 April – 8 Νovember 2026

Floor 3

An Ode to Things. Niki Kanagini. Retrospective revisits the work of one of the most significant Greek female artists of the post-war era, Niki Kanagini (1933–2008), in order to offer a comprehensive re-examination of her artistic practice and pay tribute to one of the most singular female voices of the latter part of the twentieth century in Greece. The exhibition brings together a diverse body of work, spanning four decades: from her large-scale tapestries first shown at the 5th Biennale Internationale de Tapisserie in Lausanne (1971) and her first solo exhibition at the Iolas-Zoumboulakis Gallery (1976), to her immersive, participatory installations. The exhibition seeks to reintroduce the critical dimensions of the artist’s work, such as her engagement with the language of modernism and the relationship between the applied and fine arts, her systematic exploration of writing as a visual medium, and her investigation of gender identity and experience, as well as of the participatory and sociological implications of art.

The exhibition takes its title – An Ode to Things – from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s (1904–1973) eponymous poem, which was found among the artist’s personal papers and was likely a source of inspiration for her. The poem’s closing lines – many things conspired to tell me the whole story. Not only did they touch me, or my hand touched them: they were so close that they were a part of my being (trans. Ken Krabbenhoft) – speak to Kanagini’s almost obsessive inquiry into the microcosms of mundanity and the myriad things populating them, serving as repositories of memory, time, and identity. This exhibition at ΕΜΣΤ ventures beyond a mere exploration of the formal transformations of objects in Kanagini’s work and instead focuses on key areas of her artistic practice: the performative character of her work, its multisensory quality, and the manifold ways in which it related to diverse contexts – gendered, (inter)cultural, and social. The exhibition has been designed as a holistic experience addressed to “potential viewers and readers,” as the artist herself would describe them in some of her Manuscripts.

An Ode to Things also presents, for the first time, seminal works from a promised gift of the artist’s family to ΕΜΣΤ.

The exhibition is produced by EMΣΤ. It is curated by EMΣΤ curator Tina Pandi. The exhibition design is by architect Yannis Arvanitis.

Opening: Thursday 2 April at 19:00

Curated by Tina Pandi

BIOGRAPHY

Niki Kanagini was born in Alexandroupoli in 1933. She studied at the École Cantonale de Dessin et d’Art Appliqué in Lausanne (1951-1954) and the Athens School of Fine Arts (1964-1958) and went on to complete postgraduate studies at London’s Central School of Arts and Design (1958-1961) on a scholarship by the National Hellenic Research Foundation. Kanagini’s early artistic practice was inspired by the principles of Bauhaus. After a period spent exploring the field of abstraction, she turned her attention to tapestry-making. In 1962 she settled permanently in Athens and in the same year presented her first solo exhibition at La Feluca Gallery in Rome, followed in 1965 by another solo show at Merlin Gallery, Athens. 1973 saw an exhibition of her work at the historic Desmos Art Gallery, while subsequent presentations were held at a summerhouse compound (Porto Rafti, 1974), and a factory (IZOLA, Thebes,1975). Through the 1970s and 1980s, Kanagini continued to present new work in solo exhibitions occasionaly designed by important Greek architects, such as Dimitris and Souzanna Antonakakis (Iolas-Zoumboulakis Gallery, 1976) and Christos Papoulias (Athens Art Gallery, 1986). In 1980 she participated in the Alexandria Biennial. In 1993 an exhibition of her work titled Gender: Female was organised by the House of Cyprus in Athens, while a retrospective was presented at the Vafopoulio Cultural Centre of Thessaloniki. During the 1990s Kanagini created a series of performative works and installations arising from her collaboration with art critic Eleni Varopoulou, which were presented at the Argos-Mycenae Festival (1996) and the Summer Academy of the National Theatre of Greece (2002-2004), among other venues. Kanagini’s role as an arts educator was equally significant. She died in Athens in 2008. In 2010, the State Museum of Contemporary Art organised a posthumous retrospective titled Domestic Scene.

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AN ODE TO THINGS. NIKI KANAGINI. RETROSPECTIVE

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