The Same River Twice: Contemporary Art in Athens
The Same River Twice: Contemporary Art in Athens
The New Museum and the DESTE Foundation, in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens, presented “The Same River Twice,” an exhibition of Athens-based artists. The exhibition, which opened at the Benaki Museum Pireos in June 2019, focused on the city of Athens and its constantly evolving artistic landscape, host to countless artist-run initiatives and exhibition spaces, cross-disciplinary happenings and collaborations, and a dauntless energy that enticed many non-Greek artists to relocate and call Athens home. This exhibition featured over thirty artists of all ages and nationalities, worked across all mediums, the exhibition offered a portrait of a city with an artistic dynamism.
“The Same River Twice” borrowed its title from an aphorism attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, in which he famously asserted that “one cannot step in the same river twice.” The flow of water offered an apt analogy for the state of constant flux Heraclitus sought to describe, and it applies to the continuous transformations of Athens’s art scene—and the inherent impossibility of capturing or containing it at any given moment. As a city, in perpetual transformation, artists have long found ways to document its shifting landscapes, whether through visual or material studies of the city’s attributes; meditations on its monuments, relics, and cast-offs; or inquiries into the character of its people and public spaces. Metamorphoses were central to many works in the exhibition: mediums defy stability and trace modulations in form, and artistic practices blurred the lines between genres or disciplines. The fluidity evoked by Heraclitus’s metaphor offered a way of thinking of identity at a time when the political struggle of those seeking to define their gender or sexuality is both turbulent and vital in Greece and worldwide. Throughout the works in the exhibition, change and transfiguration were not only constant but embraced, resonating as fundamental to the energy and character that shaped Athens and its many artists.
The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, designed by An Art Service, featuring an essay by the curators as well as texts by Nadja Argyropoulou, Danai Giannoglou, Delia Gonzalez, and Theophilos Tramboulis. Their contributions aimed to collectively establish a resource on Athens’s multifaceted art scene—from underground happenings and activist orientations to the rise of artist-run spaces and the critical realm of self-published art zines and journals.
“The Same River Twice” follows the 2016 exhibition “The Equilibrists,” which was also organized by the New Museum and DESTE Foundation and was conceived in the spirit of the DESTE Prize, an award given to a promising young Greek artist biannually. The exhibition also embodied one of the aims of the Benaki Museum, a historical museum that with the aim to bridge the past and the present, and aligned with the New Museum’s commitment to exhibiting emerging artists from around the globe.
This exhibition was curated by Margot Norton and Natalie Bell.
Thematic exhibitions
Off-site
Artists
- Eleni Christodoulou
- Anastasia Douka
- Pavlos Fysakis
- Eva Giannakopoulou
- Delia Gonzalez
- The Callas
- Lakis Ionas
- Aris Ionas
- Evi Kalogiropoulou
- Dionisis Kavallieratos
- Navine G. Khan-Dossos
- Katerina Komianou
- Panayiotis Loukas
- Petros Moris
- Rallou Panagiotou
- Angelos Papadimitriou
- Vasilis Papageorgiou
- Rena Papaspyrou
- Eftihis Patsourakis
- Anastasia Pavlou
- Yorgos Prinos
- Kostas Sahpazis
- Socratis Socratous
- Eva Stefani
- Valinia Svoronou
- Iris Touliatou
- Dimitris Tsouanatos
- Alexandros Tzannis
- Amalia Vekri
- Nikolas Ventourakis
- Vangelis Vlahos
- Eirini Vourloumis
- Neritan Zinxhiria
New Museum Curators
Partner Organization
