On Saturday, November 2nd, the opening of the main exhibition of the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, We, the Monster, took place at the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, curated by the Festival’s Artistic Director Orestis Andreadakis. The exhibition is inspired by the grand tribute of this year’s edition “We, the Monster,” which is curated by the internationally renowned Carlo Chatrian, former Artistic Director of the Berlin and Locarno Film Festivals. The Festival commissioned two up-and-coming visual artists, Malvina Panagiotidi and David Sampethai, to create artworks in constant dialogue with each other, but also with the 22 films that will be screened as part of the Festival’s grand tribute.
By abolishing the boundaries and blurring the lines between representation and allegory, the two artists presented complementary and multifaceted interpretations to trace the "monster" as an entity that survives within humanity’s collective atavistic psyche. Simultaneously, they molded a landscape intertwining an open archive with theatricality, which visitors have the opportunity to explore.
As the Festival’s Artistic Director, Orestis Andreadakis, mentions in the curator’s note: “Their monsters are the disembodied creatures of a metaphysical otherness, the intangible depiction of the primordial nightmare of human history. They are also immortal, as are phantasms, and as such they come along to round out the concerns and inquiries raised by the tribute and the art exhibition of the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.”
Taking the floor, David Sampethai noted: “We wished to create a cinematic journey, and the site lends itself to something akin to that. We wanted to establish a cinematic atmosphere or for the space to resemble a film set, perhaps an incomplete one. What we chose to do with the curtains and all the fabric, we wanted it to have a playful feel. To make it look like something children might have done for their own rooms. We attempted to explore the monster through cinema, through the various forms it has taken, while we were also quite interested in the social aspect associated with the concept of the monster, how a human being can very easily transform into a monster for a variety of reasons, both historically, as a whole, as well as individually. So, it's a game in which all elements are intertwined, while we, on our side, have tried to combine the works to establish a dialogue between my works and those of Malvina. The ambiance is the most important element; by entering the space, the visitor also steps into a different dimension,” David Sampethai stated.
“It’s not a classic, conventional exhibition, rather than a narrative the two of us unraveled together in a different way, aimed at offering the viewer an experience during which our works, although quite distinct and individual, find common ground, become integral to each other, and are transcribed in new ways. We wanted to portray these cultural transformations of the concept of the monster, either socially or anthropologically, in different ways. We wanted this exhibition to be an experience, and we also wished to reformulate certain concepts in a completely different manner, utilizing plain materials and simple media," Malvina Panagiotidi added.
Malvina Panagiotidi (Athens, 1985) lives and works in Athens. She studied Architecture at the University of Thessaly and completed the masters programme “Art in Context” at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Programme (2018), as well as the Spyropoulos Foundation Award (2016). Her artistic practice focuses on the points of intersection of the occult modernism, the mechanisms of the imaginary, and the unfamiliar aspects of human behaviour as manifested in different socio-political conditions. She has participated in art exhibitions at foundations, museums and art spaces in Greece, France, Germany, and Turkey. Malvina Panagiotidi is represented by The Breeder Gallery.
David Sampethai was born in Athens in 1989. He is represented by the Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery. He studied Painting & Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. He runs the independent art publishing house Hideout Editions. He works in different fields, such as painting, writing, music and sound, pottery, art books and tapestries, but he always places painting at the core of his practice and has it as a starting point. He loves painting more as he believes it’s the best way to say something which cannot be defined with precision. Highly evocative, often employing black humor and driven by immense curiosity and empathy, he crafts worlds through experimental narrative forms which blur the lines between storytelling techniques across different mediums, and encourage a productive delay when people observe and “see through” his work.
The two artists’ works, curated by Orestis Andreadakis, will be presented at the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Warehouse B1, Port of Thessaloniki) during the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, with free admission to the public. The exhibition will remain open even after the festival’s conclusion, until November 24th.
Duration: 1/11/2024-24/11/2024
Exhibition Space: MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts
Location: Warehouse B1, Port of Thessaloniki
Opening Hours:
1-10/11/2024: 10:00-22:00
12-24/11/2024: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10:00-18:00 & Thursday: 12:00-20:00
Admission: Free
Curated by: Orestis Andreadakis
Production-Coordination: Thanos Stavropoulos, Nikoletta Tsatsou
