State of Concept was happy to present Yota Ioannidou’s solo exhibition, titled "A Case of Perpetual No", curated by iLiana Fokianaki.
Ioannidou’s exhibition at State of Concept inaugurated a new exhibition chapter that developed in the following two years entitled "Department of Justice", delving into artistic and curatorial practices that investigate the scope of the judicial and researching real events that have had societal impacts: court cases that have divided society and political trials that changed the course of local histories. It manifested via solo exhibitions, oral histories and other archival forms and launched with "A Case Of Perpetual No" by Yota Ioannidou, co-produced with the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) of which Ioannidou is an alumna.
The exhibition - that succeeded a first act via a lecture-performance the artist presented at State of Concept Athens in January 2018 - focused on the murder of American CBS journalist George Polk in Thessaloniki, May 1948 during the civil war following the Nazi occupation. Grigoris Staktopoulos — a journalist himself — was the tragic protagonist, accused, convicted and died as a murderer, although CIA files published in the 80s proved he had fallen victim of the Cold War that was also choreographed on Greek ground.
Yota Ioannidou is an artist (born in Athens, Greece). She lives and works in Athens. Ioannidou graduated with a BA from the Athens School of Fine Arts (Greece), a MFA from the Dutch Art Institute (The Netherlands) and currently is a PhD researcher in PhDArts in Leiden University/Creative and Performing Studies and KABK/ Den Haag.
In her projects creates and revises archives, following a process of research (visits in archives and in situ research), collection (texts, images, data, maps, films) recordings, involving various ways of formulation. The formulation of the research material combines storytelling and formation of reading and performing groups on the research subject. So far in her projects looks into issues related to social struggles and movements with a strong focus on the idea of the local and translocal (i.e. most of her projects are referred to social struggles from the current Greek history related to examples that we find in other places as well as in past times).
ON VIEW: 12th May—14th July 2018
