Never Cross the Same River Twice

Participating artists, Part I: Monica de Miranda, Moataz Nasr, Harold Offeh, Ahmet Öğüt, Longinos Nagila, Gilivanka Kedzior, Daisuke Takeya, Emo de Medeiros, Marinella Senatore, Sammy Baloji and Lazara Rosell Albear

Participating artists, Part II: Valentina Karga, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Mary Zygouri, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Eva Papamargariti and George Drivas

Never Cross the Same River Twice (Chapter 2: Transhistorical Investigations) embraces expansive videographies that aim to foster new forms of transnational and collective assembly. Curated by French-Togolese independent curator Kisito Assangni and Greek-British curator Ariana Kalliga, the exhibition forms a time-shifting survey of performances converging between video, film and installation. Initiated as a travelling research project in 2020, the exhibition connects two borders that unfold in tandem, tracing the recent video practices of 11 international artists selected by Assangni and six contemporary Greek video artists invited into dialogue by space52, Athens.

The selected video works act as sites of visual contestation; cinematic aesthetics with narratives that re-remember; they reclaim histories and ancestries; decolonize both the mind and the imagination. Referencing Heraclitus’ river, which conceived identity as an ever-evolving and fluctuating entity, the title of the exhibition is a call to invent new grounds in place of entrenched environmental, political, and regulatory systems.

The participating artists tackle subjects that challenge us to reflect on the changing world in which we live, reclaiming lived realities and public domains. Exploring the limits of film as activism, several of the works reflect what Argentinian scholar Walter D. Mignolo termed the “epistemic disobedience and decolonial freedom” needed to rebuild just and non-colonial futures.

From a “coming community” to a planetary escape, the exhibition opens up uncanny spectral exits to new geopolitical imaginaries. Accompanied by a parallel series of bi-weekly screenings and talks, including a night organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts (LAB12), Never Cross the Same River Twice aims to expand and densify the interconnected motifs weaved through the exhibition program; history, ancestry, ethnography, spirituality, memory, colonization, Afrofuturism, feminism, diaspora, identity, globalization, consumerism, myth.

Exhibition team
Curators: Ariana Kalliga and Kisito Assangni 
Project Advisor: space52 Founder, Dionisis Christofilogiannis  
Communications Coordinator: Dimitra Michail
Design: Pantelis Vitaliotis-Magneto & Virginia Russolo
Public Program Guest Curators: Argyro Nicolaou, Samantha Ozer,
Evi Roumani (LAB12, Athens School of Fine Arts), Menelaos Karamaghiolis

About the organizers
space52 is an Athens-based nonprofit hosting an annual program of exhibitions, publications, and resident practitioners that aim to expand critically engaged dialogues around contemporary art practice in Greece. space52 was founded in 2017 by Dionisis Christofilogiannis, a multidisciplinary artist based in Athens and a Professor of Fine Art at the American College of Greece. Recent exhibitions include EMST - National Museum of Contemporary Art Greece, MOMus Thessaloniki, and Biennale 6: Thessaloniki. 

Kisito Assangni is a Togolese-French curator, art consultant, and farmer, who studied museology at Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Currently living between UK, France and Togo, his research focuses primarily on psychogeography and the cultural impact of globalization. He investigates the modes of cultural production that combine theory and practice. He inherently aims at going beyond the usual relations between artist, curator, institution, audience, and artwork, in order to engage audiences in encounters with art that are unexpected, transformative, and fun. Assangni is heavily involved in video, performance, and experimental sound. His discursive exhibitions have been shown internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Malmo Konsthall, Sweden; Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; Es Baluard Museum of Art, Palma, Spain; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; Marrakech Biennale among others.

Ariana Kalliga is a curator and researcher based in Athens. She has previously worked on the curatorial teams of MoMA’s Architecture and Design Department, on the exhibitions; Neri Oxman: Material Ecologies (2020), The Value of Good Design (2019), and Modern Architecture in South Asia: The Project of Decolonization (Forthcoming), prior to joining the Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid, as an Archives Fellow. She is an alumnus of Oxford University’s History of Art Department and has worked on public programs, publications and exhibitions shown at the following institutions: Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik and TBA-21 Academy (Croatia), Eero Saarinen Terminal (Hellinikon, Athens), Pierogi Gallery (NY), Modern Art Oxford (UK), Manifesta 11 (Zurich), Hydra School Projects (Hydra Island), Zoetrope (Athens), and the EVCC (NY). In 2020, she participated in the WCSCD curatorial residency program, Belgrade, and is currently the 2020-2021 Curator in Residence at space52, Athens.

Location and Hours
Opening Hours: Open to the public on weekends (more info on website). Open on weekdays by appointment.

Contact: info@space52.gr

Never Cross the Same River Twice is supported by the NEON Organization and Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative (PCAI).