#OccupyArt Project* Network: Greece in USA @greeceinus [French — Greek cultural exchange]
Consulate General of France in New York
Opening : Thursday, February 17th, 2022, 6 pm
The exhibition will last for one month for the public by appointment only
RSVP for the month-long exhibition : rsvp.new-york-fslt@diplomatie.gouv.fr
GREECE IN USA participates in the Occupy Art Project at the Consulate General of France in New York. GREECE IN USA is dedicated to offering innovative and unique programs in education and the arts, all exploring the evolving diversity and richness of Greek and Cypriot cultures. The NYC 501c3 non-profit organization seeks to shape and envision the image of contemporary Greece in the United States beyond existing stereotypes and to generate new thinking about the arts and promote cross-cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of creation, artists and curators. More at: https://greeceinusa.com
Opening this Thursday 17 at the French Consulate in New York @franceinnyc #Exhibition 🎨 | OCCUPY #3 NETWORKS by @occupyartproject
📆 Thursday, February 17, 2022 at 6:00 PM
Network: Greece in USA @greeceinus [French — Greek cultural exchange]
Curator: Dr. Sozita Goudouna contributes with participating artists:
Alina Bliumis | Jeff Bliumis | Kyvèli Zoi |Chet Moye Lubarsky |Robin Cofer & Sarah Singh @panorama_editions and has introduced to the occupy network participating artists: Katerina Christidi and Vassilis Salpistis
🖼 Register for free on our Eventbrite to see this piece in person and discover all those that will be exhibited at the Consulate (link in bio)!
#Art #OccupyArt #OccupyArtProject#OccupyNetworks #Opening#Vernissage #Performances#Paintings #Sculpture #Artists#Curators #France #French#FranceInNYC #FranceinNewYork#NewYork #NewYorkCity
Alina and Jeff Bliumis contribution:
CULTURAL TIPS FOR NEW AMERICANS, 2022
Throughout their practice, Alina and Jeff Bliumis engage in an ongoing investigation into foreignness and the ontology of cultural misfits. As exemplified by the title of their first catalogue, Receiving the Stranger, the artists’ work is rooted in the desire to communicate through difference. Using communication as the medium par excellence, their projects raise questions around what constitutes community, what constitutes borders, and how the former are shaped by the latter. Most importantly, the artists acknowledge that language itself can function as a border, as a paradigm of power, and can be used to frame communities. In the words of literary theorist Leo Bersani, language doesn’t merely describe identity but actually produces it.
Cultural Tips for New Americans 2022 reiterates a project that Alina & Jeff Bliumis first undertook in 2011. In this earlier iteration, Cultural Tips for New Americans, the artists set out to compile advice that people who consider themselves “real Americans” give to newcomers, to supposedly help them assimilate to their new surroundings. Characterized by a certain lightheartedness and humor, these cultural tips in fact reveal inherent aspects of American society and say more about Americans themselves than the communities to whom they address their advice.
Having immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, Alina and Jeff Bliumis picked up on this American encouragement to “blend in” early on. Now, in the wake of our current political climate, the artists felt an urgency to revisit this project, and gathered additional cultural tips for new Americans living under the Trump presidency using handbooks, public forums, street question- naires, and social media.
The collection of tips that resulted from the artists’ inquiry ranges from amusing suggestions (If someone says ‘come over anytime’ don’t take it literally) to harsh realities (Sometimes undocumented immigrants stay undocumented for a long time). Concurrently, the artists collected ethnic wooden souvenirs, which radiate a certain fetishization of otherness, from all around New York City and sandblasted these objects to remove their original decorations and uncover the wood underneath. The cultural tips are then written onto the wooden souvenirs in ink, causing them to become decontextualized objects, much like the immigrants to whom the cultural tips are addressed (text: Ksenia M. Soboleva).
Alina Bliumis is New York-based artist, born in Minsk, Belarus. Alina received her BFA from the School of Visual Art in 1999 and a diploma from the Advanced Course in Visual Arts in Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy in 2005. She has exhibited internationally at the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France, the First Moscow Biennales of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Busan Biennale (Busan, South Korea), Assab One (Milan, Italy), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, US), Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France), Centre d’art Contemporain (Meymac, France), the James Gallery, The Graduate Center CUNY (New York, US), Museum of Contemporary Art (Cleveland, US), Museums of Bat Yam (Bat-Yam, Israel), the Jewish Museum (New York, US), the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Botanique Museum (Brussels, Belgium), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), MAC VAL — Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (France). Her works are in various private and public collections, including MAC VAL — Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France; Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; The Saatchi Collection, UK; The Harvard Business School, USA; The National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA and Missoni Collection, Italy. More at http://www.alinabliumis.com
Jeff Bliumis is New York-based artist. Jeff has received his BA from Columbia university in 1980. Attended Berkeley University,California, California College of Arts and Crafts, California, New School, New York. Jeff has exhibited internationally at the First, Second, and Third Moscow Biennales of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Busan Biennale 2006 (Busan, South Korea), Assab One (Milan, Italy), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, US), Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France), Centre d’art Contemporain (Meymac, France), The James Gallery, The Graduate Center CUNY (New York, US), Museum of Contemporary Art (Cleveland, US), Museums of Bat Yam (Bat-Yam, Israel), the Jewish Museum (New York, US), the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK).His works are in various private and public collections, including the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), Museums of Bat Yam (Israel), the Saatchi Collection (UK), the Harvard Business School (US), the Museum of Immigration History, Paris (France) and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (UK). More at http://jeffbliumis.com
Kyvèli Zoi contributes with “Woman Looking at the Future” and “Inner Fire” 2022
Ink on Canvas
Dimensions: 178x138 cm / 5.8 x 4.8 feet
Ink on Canvas
Dimensions: 178x138 cm / 5.8 x 4.8 feet
Kyvèli Zoi (b.1993 in Athens, Greece) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Athens. She completed her BFA at the School of Visual Arts New York City (USA, 2016), after attending classes at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 2014) and Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design (London, 2011–12). Her work features in many private collections across the globe, and her collaborations include projects for the National Theatre of Greece, the Michael Cacoyannis’ Foundation, SVA Theatre in New York and for the film director George Panoussopoulos. She has held four solo shows and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in New York, London, Brussels, Naples and Athens, the most recent being: “Rien Ne Va Plus” at Waldburger Wouters Gallery Online (Brussels), “Animal Show” a group exhibition at Acappella Gallery (Naples), and her solo show “Coffee Cigarettes Amore” at Elma (New York). Kyvèli is also the director of KYAN, a new project space she founded in June 2021. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021–22). More at http://www.kyvelizoi.com
Chet Moye Lubarsky’s contribution: Embassy #10(NYC), 2022.
Chet Moye Lubarsky originally conceived of this project as an introductory exhibition for a project-space called “United Nations Gallery” that would democratically provide faux-institutional support to international artists and it is my hope that potential diplomatic engagements may result in a broader incorporation of “shelter” for artists within New York City’s.
Now he bikes everywhere he goes. Back and forth from his studio, across the island of Manhattan, he notices the flags of nations flown outside townhouses and office buildings. One day he brought with him paper and pencil and began collecting frottage relief drawings from plaques marking each embassy house hy passed. The project attempts to complete this collection, in full, for all 118 diplomatic missions located in New York City. (I have approximately 97 remaining) and will display the complete drawings alongside a hand-made city map as a legend to mark each location, as well as a short film documenting the interaction at the boundary between the sidewalk as public space and the building as sovereign land. This project examines the political tensions between the citizen and the state, between art and power, and between American idealism and its foreign policy. When, why, and where is a drawing perceived as a threat? Or more utopian, can making a drawing bring competing nations together through the expansion of borders, the broadening of minds, and the sheltering of artists? The artist will perform the role of artist as wanderer, artist as fool, artist as bureaucrat, and artist as diplomat. Chet will collaborate with local international artists to complete the series and it is important to note that the project promises not to break any law, cause any damage, or disobey the explicit wishes of others. A refusal to participate will be entered in form as substitute.The framing of each piece defines the physical presence of the political apparatus behind all artists’ work. Or rather, in positive terms, does the competition amongst nations allow for. The project provides artist of different nations together in defense of artist trespassing.
*** The project promises not to break any law, cause any damage, or disobey the explicit wishes of others. A refusal to participate will be entered as substitute.
Economic inequality on the global scale manifests itself in residential terms on the municipal map. Some consulates are fancier, some are more hidden. Likewise nationalism, the openness of borders and of free speech, determines the accessibility granted to the public, or more specifically the artist as an active role within the public.
Chet Moye Lubarsky (b. 1991 Madison, Wisconsin, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work examines redemptive theories of labor and the shifting political, theatrical, poetic, and tragic roles of the artist in contemporary society and cultural production. His practice combines traditional fine art practices such as painting, sculpture, film, and performance, with American craft techniques including woodworking, furniture, and ceramics, to imagine the strict possibility that artwork is a functional and corrective device. His artwork has appeared in group shows at Signal Gallery, New York; Safe Gallery, New York; Acid Macht Neu, Berlin; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, IL. He received his MFA in 2019 from Cornell University and BA in Visual Art from the University of Chicago. He has also completed post-baccalaureate certification in ceramics at the University of Wisconsin and studies at Université Paris Diderot. This would be the artists first solo show in New York and he is hopeful for the opportunity. More at http://chetmoye.com
Ege Okal contributing with “Goldensmell” and “Multilateralism”
Slide projector on loop, 57 slides of migrant’s food packaging, 2 slides of rice paper, 1 slide of flat bread, 3 slides of my mother’s tomato paste that I brought from home
This slideshow consists of a collection of migrant’s foods and food packaging that were in reach during the artist’s time in the States. Instead of using photographic positives for the slides, she places cellophane packaging between each of the glass slide holders. The slideshow is on loop, showing 57 abstracted slides of migrant’s food packaging, 2 slides of rice paper, 1 slide of flatbread, 3 slides of my mother’s tomato paste that I brought from home.
Director- General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay in the Multilateralism Conference at UNGA 2019.
Ege Okal (b. 1990) is a Turkish artist based in New York. Her work assesses, reimagines, and reconfigures the material and experiential qualities of violence, space, gender, language, diplomacy, and memory through film, animation, installation, and sculpture. She received her MFA in 2020 from Cornell University and BA from Sabanci University. She is currently teaching at Izmir Economy University, while working as a photojournalist at the United Nations. She is the Co-Founder and Director of Elma artist-run space in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been shown in Jack Hanley Gallery in New York (USA), Safe Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (USA), Pera Museum in Istanbul (Turkey), DOK Leipzig Film Festival (Germany), Helsinki International Film Festival (Finland) and many international film festivals.
Sarah Singh with Robin Cofer contributing with:
In this project, Fashion is depicted through the idea of “character as style” with stying by Robin Cofer and characters by Sarah Singh. This is the fifth collaboration between Sarah Singh and Robin Cofer. More @ www.sarahsingh.com
Sarah Singh is an award winning filmmaker, photographer, and artist Sarah Singh works across media and has premiered her films in museums around the world. Her last film explored Yves Saint Laurent’s inspiration from India alongside a Warhol inspired portrait of one of his muse/models Kirat Young who was India’s first supermodel. Sarah is the Founder/Creative Director of Panorama Editions, a unique international art salon set in historic sites. Her forthcoming project involves film, theatre, and ancient histories.
Robin Cofer is a classically trained dancer, performance artist and choreographer working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Based in New York City, Robin’s projects address themes of female empowerment, identity and myth, while using fashion as a method to explore a myriad of issues including objectification, self-expression, gender and beauty. Often site-specific, her pieces develop from spontaneous reactions to her environment and are grounded in collaboration. Her recent projects include partnering with filmmaker, Sarah Singh during the 2020 New York City Spring/Summer quarantine on a Polaroid and 35mm digital project, “Park Avenue is Dead”, which includes an 11-page poetic exercise. The artist also stars in Singh’s film, “Alexandra”, an epic, experimental film shooting across multiple countries including Greece, Egypt and India, resuming in late 2020. Cofer performed solo for Iceland’s International Art Biennale Fresh Winds, 6th Edition, in early 2020 in Singh’s experimental performance piece, “Endless Journey to the End of the World.” For Miami Art Basel 2019, Cofer choreographed, styled, and performed, “The Only Cat in a Dog Show”: a concept by Sarah Singh in collaboration with Onishi Gallery and Altuzzara. In 2019, during a residency at Sara Kay Gallery, Robin directed a 3-part neoclassical, on pointe, conceptual piece with spoken word which she choreographed, styled and performed investigating the concept of the male gaze. More at https://www.robincofer.com/about
