South by South East marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of EMΣT’s collection and its orientation. Drawing on recent acquisitions and donations, a core group of existing works from the collection by artists from the Middle East, as well as works by Greek artists from different generations and selected loans, the exhibition foregrounds a new collection policy, begun in 2021. This looks beyond inherited Western canons and repositions Greece within a wider Mediterranean and south-eastern European cultural geography—one that extends through the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa – hence the exhibition’s title. In doing so, it reframes Greece not as the periphery of Western Europe, but as a central node in South East Europe and the Middle or ‘Near’ East, a historically entangled region shaped by mobility, exchange, conflict, multilingualism, and layered identities.
South by Southeast is a deliberate play on Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest, signaling a symbolic reorientation away from the long-standing fixation on Anglo-Saxon and Western European cultural paradigms that has marked Greek modernity since independence. Instead, it insists on a more complex, plural cartography—one that acknowledges Greece’s strategic geographical location at the crossroads of continents, empires, and belief systems, and its deep historical affinities with the region once known as the Levant. This shift resonates with broader cultural and geopolitical currents, including what has been described recently as a contemporary “turn East” in Greece, reflecting renewed political, economic, and cultural engagements with neighbouring regions.
By bringing these perspectives into dialogue within the framework of a national museum, South by South East articulates a curatorial and institutional commitment to rethinking Greece’s cultural self-understanding. It proposes a move away from an inherited Western gaze toward a more situated, relational perspective that acknowledges Greece’s embeddedness in a complex regional ecology. In doing so, EMΣT affirms the Mediterranean, south-eastern Europe, and the wider Near East not as marginal zones to European modernity, but as generative sites of artistic production, critical thought, and cultural innovation.
No collection is ever complete; its gaps, inconsistencies, and priorities are intrinsic to its formation. Yet the most compelling collections are those that articulate a coherent narrative across time and place—a guiding principle that has informed our approach here, shaping both the selection of works and the broader story they collectively tell. Ultimately, South by South East is not only a presentation of recent acquisitions and donations; it is a proposition how we might build a collection with a distinctive, recogniseable identity. It invites viewers to reconsider where Greece stands—historically, geopolitically, and culturally—and to recognise the creative and critical potential that lies in embracing the country’s south-eastern orientation as a source of inspiration and renewed cosmopolitanism.
