PRESENTATION: Pedion

The Pedion Areos is one of the largest public parks in Athens, Greece. The park was designed in 1934 and its purpose was to honor the heroes of the Greek Revolution of 1821, 21 of whom are depicted in marble busts standing in the park. The initial plan included the construction of a “Pantheon” for the revolutionaries and also a major Christian temple, dedicated to Greek independence. The park is a state-owned public ground, covering an area of 27.7 hectares, and is located about 1 km NE from the Omonoia Square.

Photo: Pedion -Field for the Art & the Culture NPCS Archive

The Pedion Areos Park has been a public gathering place for promenade and pleasure since the 19th century. In the course of its existence, it has experienced periods of prosperity but also of severe decline, especially during the years of the deep economic crisis (2008-2018). Unfortunately, for a long time the park was left untended, and it ceased to be either attractive to or safe for visitors. Finally, in 2008, redevelopment began (which was completed in 2010 by the architectural firm Tobazis) with the aim of creating a promenade and a green space where people would be inspired by the glorious past of its heroes and would also be able to exercise, to walk, and to enjoy the park again. Let us not forget that the identity of a space is shaped by the people who use it. The public health crisis of the last three years has brought the park back to the forefront. In a metropolis where the life and the activities of its inhabitants were for many months “paused” due to the imposed confinement, the park was for thousands of citizens the only “escape to freedom.” The pandemic has transformed it into the center of the daily lives of many and different people. In a way, it became a symbol of freedom, culturalism, public good, dialogue and communication. The exhibition “Pedion” is proposed as a place of communication and contemplation, which aims to make visible, through a rich and varied artistic expression, aspects and pursuits of the everyday life in crisis, an individual experience that is raised to a collective consciousness. It could be defined as the study of the dialectical relationship between the private and the collective, between art and society, between the spectator and the work of art, between people. The exhibition is an attempt, a field-place of coexistence and exchange of different people’s stories through the prism of art. Beyond the park, the exhibition continues at the site of the “Shedia” street paper, the “shedia home” at Kolokotronis Street in the center of the city, as one of the main goals of the paper is to raise awareness and mobilize our citizens on critical issues of homelessness, poverty and social exclusion. “Pedion” seeks to record the history of the present, to highlight once again the importance of culture and of the people of the art community to society, to emphasize how art plays a key role in the endless interpretive process of reality and the world in general.

Participating Artists: Antonis Antoniou, Antonis Vathis, Νίκος Iavazzo, Paolo Incarnato, Andreas Kalli, Babis Karalis, Eleni Lyra, Eleanna Martinou, Cornelia Mittendorfer, Efsevia Mihailidou, Frini Mouzakitou, Dimitra Papagianni, Andreas Savva, Dimitris Skourogiannis, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Gioula Chatzigeorgiou

Photo: Cornelia Mittendorfer, Courtesy the artist and Pedion -Field for the Art & the Culture NPCS

Info: Curators: Niki Papaspirou and Stratis Pantazis, Pedion Areos Park (space between the bust of Markos Botsaris and the burial monument of Alexander Ypsilantis- the Pammegiston Taxiarchon), Athens & shedia home, 56 Kolokotroni Street, Athens, Greece, Duration: 6-18/9/2022, www.facebook.com/pedionamke & www.shedia.gr/

Communication Sponsor: dreamideamachine