Concept-Curating: Maira Stefou
“Οστρακο ΙΙ” will be presented at the Epigraphic Museum (Tositsa 1 Athens), November 2025.
Concept-Curating: Maira Stefou
Ostracism : the exile
Ostracism began to be practiced in Athens from the 6th century BC, as a means of protecting the Athenian democratic state. According to Aristotle, it was
established by Cleisthenes in 510 BC with the democratic reform, to rid the
Athenians of citizens who had amassed too much political power, to the point of
becoming dangerous.
Citizens would carve the name of a person they considered dangerous to society on pieces of broken clay vessels.
This is how men like Themistocles were exiled, and the measure came to be used to exterminate political opponents.
Democratic voting remains to this day the fairest way to make decisions in a social group, but it has the risk of them being governed by ignorance and ulterior motives with disastrous results.
Ostracism in the digital age can also be social marginalization in many forms, (social media ban, booling, ghosting, block etc), ways of exclusion on digital platforms. Also, the lack of “followers”, “fans” is a social “flaw”, in contrast to the ancient ostracism that also happened when excessive popularity created fear of the creation of a tyrannical regime.
The works will make a dialogue with part of the collection of Ancient Greek Shells.
We will juxtapose the concept of ostracism as a current social phenomenon using
contemporary visual language.
Artists participating:
Kostas Christopoulos, Nikos Charalampidis, Dionysis Christofilogiannis, Charalampos Dermatis, Marios Fournaris, Dimitris Fragakis,, Vasilis Gerodimos, Anestis Ioannou, Nikos Kanoglou, Leonidas Karabinis, Jason Karaindros, Aris Katsilakis, Panos Kefalas, Aggeliki Loi, Manolis Merabeliotis, Stavroula Michalopoulou, Aggelos Papadimitriou, Nikos Papadimitriou, Artemis Potamianou, Nikos Sepetzoglou, Panagiotis Siagris, Matina Stavropoulou, Maira Stefou, Maritasa Tsimplaki, kostas Tsolis, Margarita Tsouloucha, Kostis Velonis, Andreas Vousouras, Sofia Zarari