opbo studio Launches With An Exhibitions Program Curated by Ioanna Gerakidi - opbo studio

opbo studio launches with an exhibitions program curated by Ioanna Gerakidi

opbo studio* announces its official launch as an art space with a series of exhibitions curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. The program includes a series of solo shows focusing on the political and poetic qualities of seduction as a means of exploring issues of collective and individual identities. Over these series, seductions will be used as metaphors, aiming to move us, audiences, into unknown spaces, non-linear times, a-rhythmic prays and spells; they long to be touched as diaries of fears and grievances and nightmares, yet also as archives of raptures and laughs, coming when licking our wounds, when “dancing into the ecstatic” quoting the words of Tavia Nyong’o.

The program will be announced soon on social media and on opbostudio.com.

Curatorial Note:

A note,
On seduction or how to go astray

seduction
an act of
seducing someone
to error enticement especially
to evil
to lead away
to lead aside
to astray

The words above, are not mine. I found them online when googling the etymology of the word seduction. What’s mine though, is their architecture in space, and it’s leading astray, following the contradictory qualities of seduction. Seductions are worlds; they are tempting, pleasurable, vivid, mystical, yet they are also dark, intimidating, lonely, transforming. What do seductions reveal? How can they be inscribed, described or even transcribed as cruisings for affect? And why these acts of enticement, these tempts to offer pleasure, have they been associated with evil or error, considered as daemonic praxes leading life astray?

Through a series of solo presentations, my artistic direction aims to look at and with exercises of seduction initiated, performed, filmed or spoken aloud by artists, whose practices trace the complexities of libininal schemes, the vexed mechanisms of systemic control, the myltilayed interpersonal and sociopolitical hierarchies or enactments of power. The axes of the solo presentations linger over the subjects of agency, permission, resistance, voicing opposition, whilst encountering that which has muzzled and dismissed.

Over these series, seductions will be used as metaphors, aiming to move us, audiences, into unknown spaces, non-linear times, a-rhythmic prays and spells; they long to be touched as diaries of fears and grievances and nightmares, yet also as archives of raptures and laughs, coming when licking our wounds, when “dancing into the ecstatic” quoting the words of Tavia Nyong’o. They are propositions, invitations towards a close listening of trembling metallic sounds, shrieking voices, giddy waters, unearthly grounds.

− Ioanna Gerakidi

Ioanna Gerakidi works as a writer, curator and educator based in Athens. Her research and writing interests look with and think through diaristic, archival and linguistic, often disorderly, schemes to speak about sociopolitical and interpersonal dynamics. She has curated exhibitions and hosted public events for/in galleries, art spaces and institutions such as 2023Eleusis (GR), Stedelijk Museum (NL), Athens Biennale (GR), State of Concept (GR), Hot Wheels Athens (GR), Haus N (GR) and NiMAC (CY), amongst others. Her texts and poems have been presented or published in international spaces, platforms, publications and online journals. She has lead workshops for and worked as a lecturer or mentor for academies and educational programs such as the Rietveld Academie (NL), Piet Zwart Institute (NL), the Design Academy Eindhoven (NL), Athens School of Fine Arts (GR), Onassis Air Program (GR), Artworks Fellowship Program of Stavros Niarchos Foundation (GR) and more. She has been awarded with the Artworks Curatorial Fellowship Program of Stavros Niarchos Foundation in 2021. Past and current curatorial residencies of hers include: Neon Curatorial Exchange (UK), Rupert Residency (LT), and Saha Curatorial Residency (TR).

opbo studio is an independent art space in Piraeus founded by producer and filmmaker Alexandros Tiliopoulos. With a focus on visual arts and filmmaking, opbo studio functions both as an exhibition space for contemporary art and as a shelter for hosting or producing new creative projects.