ARTIST

Phoebe Giannisi

The Black of Bones , 2023

Phoebe Giannisi is a poet and an architect whose work lies at the intersection between poetry-performance and theory, often resulting in visual arts-installations that explore the connections between language, voice, place, and memory. For the Thessaloniki biennial, Giannisi was commissioned to produce a sound walk for the city’s Archaeological Museum’s permanent display. Field, House, Garden, Grave is an open-air exhibition which allows visitors to stroll around in the cemeteries and residences of the ancient city of the 4th up to the 2nd Century BC, an era of great prosperity for the city. A walk through both the ancient history of this city and its communities, long gone but still somehow there. 

Phoebe Giannisi’s references in her research for The Black of Bones were her ongoing interest in the simultaneous co-existence of life and death, and, even more so, the resonances of death and the deathly as imprinted in the materiality of our lives. How do we communicate with the black of bones, how does joy emanate even from the morbid? Pertinent questions in a city of ghosts, like Thessaloniki. What sense do these marble-engraved edifices make in our contemporary lives? The constant unerring processes of living and dying, as an urban cat prowls among the tombs, and the zoic communes with the humus that we become. 

Thinking of the stratigraphies of history and the way they interlace, Giannisi examines the co-existence of these marble slabs and their stoic epigraphs honoring past lives, with the process of remembrance. As well as the lighting of candles, or even how Greek cityscapes include―in the process of building, rebuilding, and reconstituting themselves―ancient marble fragments of inscriptions, words, and lives which function like cryptic signs of the past, allowing for a city to be deciphered like a palimpsest or a collage of visual texts. And then death harks back, whispering from each corner, creeping out of the dark, like mild or a fierce reminder, even when least expected: in a pastoral flock of sheep on a green hill under its shepherd’s wakeful eye, or in the constant process of metamorphosis in a lush forest, where nettles, dry leaves, and various species co-exist, rot, and mold, forging new interrelationships, interweaving their processes of living and dying. Together. Or in the physicality of living, creating symbiotic relationships, as when, in the wild, animals and plants create environments just by sharing a common space. Together. Animal, mineral in constant collusion.   

Giannisi’s The Black of Bones invites us to listen to a sonic collage of read-out texts, vocal experimentations, guttural sounds, and ready-made footage of lamentations, that can be heard as a cry of existential anguish, or the humming baseline of the agony of being, flirting with the liminal in between of life or death, or of life and death. The sound-walk bridges the distance between the ancient past and the corporeal now, transferring knowledge and closely-held emotions, distilling the communion between us and them. Just as bones are crushed and become earth, transforming into compost that in turn enriches earth with fertile nutrients ready to breed new life, the sarcophagi displayed in the Archaeological Museum underline the fact that, no matter one’s social status, personal experiences, life story, richness or health, our black bones together will lie, building this city, this ground, this earth: forming dust, rust, earth, and stone.   

ARTIST'S VENUES

MAIN EXHIBITION

BEING AS COMMUNION

The central exhibition of the 8th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art aims to think critically about co-existence and collaborative practices as creative tools for handling the multiple crises that we face. Thinking through being as communion, 28 artists via their respective practices touch on various forms of more than human collaborations, with our spectral past and our challenging present, thinking of how we can co-exist with animate life around us, the land that we stand on, the food that we eat and the air that we breathe. Being as Communion will focus on inclusive practices that explore different forms of care, love and mutuality, whilst also proposing generous forms of support systems. Invited artists and artist collectives will explore the human impact on the eco-systems that we share, whilst suggesting forms of more equitable existence, for humanimal survival, probing to what extent we can learn new ways of being with, rather than dominating the world around us.

Ten key sites and museums of the city of Thessaloniki will host the exhibition’s works, in dialogue with the city’s layered history, allowing for a polyphonic reading of the exhibition in ten equal parts.

04.03 –
21.05.2023

MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Museum of Byzantine Culture, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Hamidie – Islahane Cultural Venue, Eptapyrgio, Yeni Jami, Thessaloniki French Institute, Glass Box “Scultures’ Garden” (seefront area), Thessaloniki Concert Hall (building M2)

The central exhibition of the 8th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art aims to think critically about co-existence and collaborative practices as creative tools for handling the multiple crises that we face. Thinking through being as communion, 28 artists via their respective practices touch on various forms of more than human collaborations, with our spectral past and our challenging present, thinking of how we can co-exist with animate life around us, the land that we stand on, the food that we eat and the air that we breathe. Being as Communion will focus on inclusive practices that explore different forms of care, love and mutuality, whilst also proposing generous forms of support systems. Invited artists and artist collectives will explore the human impact on the eco-systems that we share, whilst suggesting forms of more equitable existence, for humanimal survival, probing to what extent we can learn new ways of being with, rather than dominating the world around us.

Ten key sites and museums of the city of Thessaloniki will host the exhibition’s works, in dialogue with the city’s layered history, allowing for a polyphonic reading of the exhibition in ten equal parts.

04.03 –
21.05.2023

MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Museum of Byzantine Culture, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Hamidie – Islahane Cultural Venue, Eptapyrgio, Yeni Jami, Thessaloniki French Institute, Glass Box “Scultures’ Garden” (seefront area), Thessaloniki Concert Hall (building M2)

EXHIBITIONS

PROJECTS

09.02 –
30.04.2023

An exhibition collectively put together by curators of MOMus

21.12.2022 –
21.05.2023

ΜΟΜus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection

09.02 –
30.04.2023

An exhibition collectively put together by curators of MOMus

09.02 –
30.04.2023

An exhibition collectively put together by curators of MOMus

21.12.2022 –
21.05.2023

ΜΟΜus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection

BIENNALE 8

GEOCULTURA

The exchange of ideas, values and norms, within a context of a multitude of cultural, geographical and political debates and conflicts, is at the core of the concept of 'geoculture' in the political and social sciences. This is the rationale behind the decision of the 8th edition of Thessaloniki's Biennale of Contemporary Art to turn its attention to the terms 'land' (“geo-”) and 'culture', connecting the cultivation of land with culture, understood as a set of resources, texts and practices which are available to people, helping them better understand and more effectively act in the world. It explores issues of memory, history, and managing both the natural and man-made environment, under the conditions of the climate, economic and refugee crises.

The participating artists focus on histories of places and people; they touch upon issues of identity, ethics, equity and sustainability; they suggest improvised ecological technologies; they explore the potential for collective existence and question the systems by which production, consumption and profitability are organized; they put into practice ideas of resource sharing and equitable living, as well as ways of reassessing the commodification of human and non-human life. Through their works, imagination becomes a crucial factor in facilitating the audience to imagine different versions of the future.

Firmly believing that art broadens our understanding of the world, the 8th Biennale seeks not only to raise environmental awareness, but also to multiply future possibilities, with new claims and visions. The 8th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art aspires to serve as a means of communication with the world, as an act of justice and freedom, of trust and progressive thinking.

The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund) is organised by MOMus and implemented by MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections.

The participating artists focus on histories of places and people; they touch upon issues of identity, ethics, equity and sustainability; they suggest improvised ecological technologies; they explore the potential for collective existence and question the systems by which production, consumption and profitability are organized; they put into practice ideas of resource sharing and equitable living, as well as ways of reassessing the commodification of human and non-human life. Through their works, imagination becomes a crucial factor in facilitating the audience to imagine different versions of the future.

Firmly believing that art broadens our understanding of the world, the 8th Biennale seeks not only to raise environmental awareness, but also to multiply future possibilities, with new claims and visions. The 8th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art aspires to serve as a means of communication with the world, as an act of justice and freedom, of trust and progressive thinking.

The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund) is organised by MOMus and implemented by MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections.