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Greece in USA

Readings In Silence at Jefferson Market Courthouse

Following the performative intervention in May at  Seneca Village by artists Kimiyo Bremer and Karen Finley, the NYC non-profit organization "Greece in USA" presents the public intervention “Readings In Silence" by multidisciplinary artist Jenny Marketou and seven participants from different professional backgrounds. The public reading reflects on the recent years of grievances and uprisings while it stages a place for collective mourning, remembrance, healing, and organizing. The selected venue by the artist highlights the site-specificity of the project since the readings take place at the entrance of the Jefferson Market Courthouse that served as a women’s court until 1932 and is currently the annex of The New York Public Library located on 6th Ave in West Village.

Marketou draws from the limitations of enforced confinement and precariousness to experiment and develop a methodology employing silence as her artistic medium. Responding to a reality of lockdowns,“social distancing,” and quarantines the artist explores the ways we can maintain the inventiveness and sharpness when we are not able to touch, see, or hear each other confined behind walls. She asks ‘how do we appreciate solitude in its capaciousness, how do our embodied identities influence how we experience this time, and in the urgency to connect —what material circumstances might become obscured or brought into focus?’

The public intervention consists of an “In Silence,” atypical reading performance during which all readers are wearing a mask that covers their face while their voice enacts words without sound, essentially challenging Jacques Derridas’ theoretical assurance that ‘nothing can exist outside the text’ and inspired by the John Cage’s sound piece “Silence.” The performance is a revisited iteration of Jenny Marketou’s “Silence Project” that took place in collaboration with MILENA PRINCIPLE and Athens School of Fine Arts in Delphi (18-21 May, 2011) and the Goethe Institute in Athens (23-27 May, 2011). 

Participating Readers:

Elaine Angelopoulos (artist)  Adham Hafez (artist & scholar)  Joana Hötte Fittipaldi ( artist & social worker)  Rachel Katwan (producer)  Jenny Marketou (artist)  Johari Mayfield (performer)  Carolina Ramos (artist & psychologist)  Cindy Sibilsky (artist & producer).

The selected readings include quotes by Egyptian feminist, scholar, surgeon, and novelist Nawal Saadawi and Angela Y. Davis “Prisons Memoirs: The New York Women’s House of Detention,” The Village Voice, originally published in 1974.

DATE & TIME:  Thursday 23rd of September at 6.30PM, a public discussion with the audience, the artist and performers will take place following the performance at 7.10PM.

Location: Entrance of New York Public Library on 6th Ave and W10th ST at Jefferson Market Garden, New York.

Curation & Casting: Dr. Sozita Goudouna 

Production: https://greeceinusa.com 

The project takes place in the context of "Greece in USA," a New York City-based organization that promotes contemporary Greek culture in the United States, and the online group exhibitions “The Right To Silence” at Anya And Andrew Shiva Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York  and  "The Right to Breathe" group exhibition at Undercurrent.nyc that showcases 150 Greek artists under the Greek Ministry of Culture more here: 

ARTIST BIO:

Jenny Marketou born in Athens,Greece is a visual artist, educator, author based in New York where she teaches New Media Art and Social Engagement at the New School for Social Research. She has taught and given lectures, panels and/or workshops at Cal Arts, Cooper Union School of Art, SVA, Pratt Institute, Apex art and Columbia University among others. She is the recipient of the CITI Arts Corps Grants, NY (2021)  and currently an artist in residence at SwaleLab House on Governors Island in New York where she is doing field work on the water ways for her interdisciplinary work-in-progress and  film project titled RIVERING as a Decolonial Possibility as well as a companion piece Wet Gatherings  a live spoken word public gathering with artists, poets, activist , youth and community organizers. Marketou’s work has been featured in numerous  exhibitions in internationally renowned biennials , museums and galleries such as the upcoming solo  site specific multidisciplinary project titled Serious Games (2021) at Guali Tzami (Mosque  commissioned by the Municipal Art Gallery at Chania in Crete and in collaboration with Decolonize Hellas ; The School of Water ,Biennial de Mediterranean 19, San Marino(2021) ; Parliament of Bodies, Documenta 14, Athens/ Kassel; Manifesta, European Biennial; Biennial of Seville,Spain; Biennial of Sao Paolo, Brazil; Biennial de  Cartagena, Colombia; ZKM Center for Media Arts, Karlsruhe ; Museum Tinguely, Basel; Kumu Art Museum, Estonia;The High Line ,New York; Contemporary Art Museum of the Basque Country ARTIUM; Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid; Queens Museum, New York, The New Museum, New York , The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens;  ApexArt,  Abrons Art Center, Radiator Gallery  in New York; Yoyce Yohouda Gallery,Montreal in Canada, Fourth Wall Gallery in Berlin ,Au QuinzE Artist Laboratory in Paris , Kungsängen Cultural Center, Bro in Sweden ,among other venues.Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications worldwide, which includes “OrganIzing from Below”  (2016), The School of Everything, Documenta 14 (2017) Perform Interdependency, Kassel University Press (2017) , More Art in the Public Eye , Duke University Press (2019).

PARTICIPANTS BIOS:

Elaine Angelopoulos lives and works in New York City. She is an artist with an interdisciplinary approach that bridges her studio practice with audience participation, with select installations and performances. Her work has been exhibited in New York, the United States, and in Europe. Angelopoulos received a Franklin Furnace Fund/Jerome Fellowship in 2014/15. 

Her work was included in the following group exhibitions: Still Utopia: Islands, Esquisite Corpse drawings, curated by Simonetta Moro, and Aga Ousseinov, at Gallery MC and the Circolo Ricreativo Culturale, Venice, Italy; Inside, Outside, and Beyond, curated by Antonia Papatzanaki at the Greek Consulate in New York; Body, curated by Katya Grokhovsky in the Art in Odd Places Performance Festival and Exhibition in New York City; and Art on the Front Lines curated by Ronald Feldman, at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City. Visit her website at elaineangelopoulos.com.

Adham Hafez is an award-winning artist working with choreography and sound, a theorist focusing on cognitive injustice, and a curator working with underrepresented historical narratives and minoritarian discourses. A PhD candidate at New York University, who holds several MA degrees, in political science from SciencesPo Paris, in choreography from Amsterdam University of the Arts, and in philosophy from New York University. Adham Hafez is the founder of HaRaKa, an Arab-International platform dedicated to movement and performance research and production. Currently he is the creative director of Wizara, the first blockchain based company built by artists for artists.

Joana Hötte Fittipaldi is an artist, educator, and child-parent psychotherapist currently living and working in New York. Joana previously worked in educational, child welfare, and outpatient mental health settings facilitating therapeutic growth and transformation with caregivers and their children. She received a BFA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of Visual Arts and completed a dual masters degree in Child Development at Sarah Lawerence and Social Work at New York University. In 2011, she co-founded Upstairs83, a non-for-profit children’s art program in the Lower East side that provided free to low-cost children’s art classes in the community. In 2015, she exhibited at the Wonder of Learning Exhibit a documentary film titled, The Power of Listening to Children: Journeys of Inspiration from Reggio Emilia, Italy, https://www.newyorkcitywol.org/. Currently, her therapeutic work explores the value of play in children’s play therapy, and its use in dyadic play therapy as a therapeutic technique to strengthen the bond between parent and child. 

Rachel Katwan is an arts administrator living in Brooklyn, New York (ancestral lands of the Canarsee tribe of the Lenni Lenape). She currently serves as the General Manager for Pomegranate Arts, a Creative Producer dedicated to the realization of international performing arts projects. Rachel previously served in various roles at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from 2004-2016 and was a key team member on the internal producing team for some of the Academy’s most ambitious programming initiatives including the citywide Si Cuba Festival, Muslim Voices: Art & Ideas, The Bridge Project international tours, three seasons of RadioLoveFest, and the annual DanceAfrica festival.

Johari Mayfield

Johari Mayfield is a dancer, choreographer, activist, healer, and ACE-certified personal trainer living in New York City. Johari utilizes her dance and fitness background to support the wellbeing of others no matter age, stage, or circumstance. Johari’s community outreach initiatives have included children’s workshops on fitness and healthy eating at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, movement and fitness with Girls Education and Mentoring Service (GEMS), an organization committed to empowering survivors of sexual exploitation, and Reveal NYC, a nonprofit organization that encourages female survivors of domestic violence in self-care. In addition, she's also taught cardio dance classes at the Rose M. Singer Center at Riker’s Island for female inmates and team building through dance in her “Hip Hop Lit Squad” for children at the Athleta Flatiron location in NYC. She currently is on faculty at Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy, 14th St Y, ETD Outreach, and Marquis Studios. www.joharimayfield.com

Carolina Jacobs Ramos is a Brazilian artist, currently living and working in NYC. Thinking about impalpable biological and social processes, she interprets and imagines living interactions in video, sculpture and two dimensional works. Interdependence, biological symbiosis, and dispersion remind her of migration and movement in search of connection, survival and belonging. Loss is insidious, pervasive and rendered invisible by productivity. Questions remain about whose names, memories and stories are being replicated and passed forth collectively, and at what cost. Recently, her relationship with porcelain has grown into a full blown love affair. She longs for porcelain to reciprocate her love by patiently and tenderly engaging its singular mass. Carolina previously worked on her art practice in Pittsburgh, PA at UnSmoke Systems. She is a contributor to the MoonArk Project, an interdisciplinary art project curated to land on the moon in 2023. She currently works as a psychotherapist and social worker in New York City while completing Pre-Medical studies at Columbia University. She received a BHA in Psychology and Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh. Recent Exhibition: 2019 / La lune : Zone Imaginaire à Défendre / Centre Pompidou, Paris / Group Show- MoonArk http://www.carolinajacobsramos.com/contact---about.html

Cindy Sibilsky

Cindy Sibilsky is the founder/CEO and producer of InJoy Entertainment LLC, a multimedia entertainment company focusing on meaningful global cultural exchange. She is a Broadway, Off-Broadway, and international producer, marketing director, performer, and writer/journalist. In 2019 she acted as guest editor, curator, and lead writer for American Theatre Magazine’s special edition on Japanese contemporary theatre. Currently, she produces tours and virtual events, performs on film, stages, and streets, and writes for prominent publications with an international reach. www.injoyentertainment.com@injoyentertainment (IG)

CURATOR’S BIO:

Dr. Sozita Goudouna is a professor, curator and the author of "Beckett's Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts" published by Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism. She holds a PhD from the University of London on art and respiration. She was the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon curator at Performa Biennial and is head of operations at Raymond Pettibon foundation and teaches at City University New York (CUNY). She has taught at NYU, New School and Roger Williams and has been awarded several fellowships including the Onassis Scholarship and the Onassis research award. Her internationally exhibited projects include participations at Performa Biennial in New York, Documenta, Onassis Foundation Festival, New Museum, Hunterian Museum, Benaki Museum, Byzantine Museum, EMST Contemporary Art Museum among others. Prior to joining Performa she was the three year artistic director of the 1st EU funded research and exhibitions program in Athens under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. During her directorship, she curated and commissioned projects by Martin Creed, Santiago Sierra, Lynda Benglis, Roy Ascott and has collaborated in 2014 with Marina Abramovic for the production of “Seven Deaths." She is the founding director of the US non-profit “Greece in USA” for the promotion of contemporary Greek art. Sozita served as treasurer of the board of directors of AICA Hellas International Art Critics Association and as member of the board of directors at ITI International Theatre Association, UNESCO. More at: https://cuny.academia.edu/DrSozitaGoudouna

Cover Photo: Entrance of New York Public Library on 6th Ave and W10th ST at Jefferson Market Garden, New York. Photo by Jenny Marketou

Currently on View:

Greece in USA launches the second iteration of its program for the internationalization of Greek Culture in the USA. The group exhibition The Right to Breathe takes as a starting point the “shortness of breath” derived from the experience of political pressure, social injustice, and economic austerity, exploring its connection with poetics, live art, and embodied politics. The concerns driving the “I Can’t Breathe” debates around race, discrimination, and violence have been left unconfronted for far too long. At the same time, the countless social injustices, and the politics of disposability that the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare expose the delusions of a post-racial society, as well as the deprivation of the universal right to breathe (see Achille Mbembe). The topic of breathability that the exhibition identifies and aims to historicize also provides an insight into the ongoing revaluation of criminal justice reform.

Participating Artists:

Chloe Akrithaki, Tonia Andrioti, Elaine Angelopoulos, Antonakis, Yota Argyropoulou / Michalis Konstantatos (Blindspot Theater Group), Christos Athanasiadis, Manolis Baboussis, Evangelia Basdekis, Rania Bellou, Abdelkader Benchamma, Emmanuel Bitsakis, Aggeliki Bozou, Christina Calbari, Lizzie Calligas, Rafika Chawishe, Thalia Chioti, Mat Chivers, Katerina Christidi, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Lydia Dambassina, SeeVa Kitslis Dawne, Martha Dimitropoulou, Christophoros Doulgeris, Jessica Feldman & Steven Gertner, Dimitris Foutris, Mona Gamil, Maria Georgoula, Eleni Glinou, Nella Golanda, Kyriaki Goni, Delia Gonzalez, Efi Haliori, Zoe Hounta, The Callas (Lakis & Aris Ionas), Elias Kafouros, Eleni Kamma, Athanassios Kanakis, Nikomachi Karakostanoglou, Irini Karayiannopoulou, Ismini Karyotaki, Zoe Keramea, Aspassia Kouzoupi, Karolina Krasouli, Sia Kyriakakos, Dimitris Lamprou, James Lane, Anna Lascari, Jenny Marketou, Jannis Markopoulos, Yolanda Markopoulou (Mind the Fact), Eleanna Martinou, Despina Meimaroglou, Maro Michalakakos, Fryni Mouzakitou, Anna Muchin, Eleni Mylonas, Margarita Myrogianni, Mariela Nestora, John Newsom, Alice Palaska, Maria Papadimitriou, Nikos Papadopoulos, Natasha Papadopoulou, Euripides Papadopetrakis, Ilias Papailiakis, Elli Papakonstantinou (ODC Ensemble), Tereza Papamichali, Kostas Pappas, Eftihis Patsourakis, Helene Pavlopoulou, Anastasia Pelias, Elena Penga, Antonis Pittas, Tula Plumi, Artemis Potamianou, Marina Provatidou, Mantalina Psoma, Irene Ragusini, Nana Sachini, Georgia Sagri, Martha Sakellariou, George Sampsonidis, Katerina Sarra, Martin Sexton, Christina Sgouromiti, Vouvoula Skoura, Evangelia Spiliopoulou, Danae Stratou, Stefania Strouza, Vassiliea Stylianidou (aka Franck-Lee Alli-Tis), Maria Tsagkari, Antonis Tsakiris, Giorgos Tserionis, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Nana Varveropoulou, Alexis Vasilikos, VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), Nikolas Ventourakis, Eugenia Vereli, Vassilis Vlastaras, Panagiotis Vorrias, Maro Zacharogianire, Katerina Zacharopoulou, Theodoros Zafeiropoulos, Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos, Lilia Ziamou, and Dimitris Zouroudis.

Group Exhibition The Right To Silence? at The Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery gallery at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Participating Artists:

Antelman Maria, Antonakos Stephen, Antoniou Klitsa, Athanasiou Margarita, Balaskas Bill, Bofiliou Margarita, Bourgoin Veronique, Charalambidis Nicos, Chatzipavlidou Despina  & Mouriadou Anthi, D’Agostino Tim, Dimitriadi Christina, Drivas Geor

contact: greeceinus@gmail.com

 
 

 

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