Museum of Contemporary Art

9η Μπιενάλε Σύγχρονης Τέχνης Θεσσαλονίκης | Πρόγραμμα τελευταίας εβδομάδας λειτουργίας

cleo.gousiou — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:26:48 +0000

9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art | Last week Closing Program cleo.gousiou Mon, 06/29/2026 - 12:37

Biennale 9 is announcing the program of events that will be concluding its implementation period. The program of its last week of operation, from Tuesday, June 30 until Sunday, July 5, is comprised by special opening hours, admission free days, screenings' program, performances and a DJ set Closing Party

Find the program and the descriptions of the performances and the screenings in the attached files below.

Final Week Exhibition Visiting Hours

Visiting hours are extended until 11 p.m. More precisely:

Tuesday, June 30 to Friday, July 3 4–11 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday, July 4 & 5 2–11 p.m.

Admission to the exhibition will be free for the public on Wednesday, July 1 and Sunday, July 5, 2026.

Program of Performances

Saturday, July 4, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art “Xanthippi Ηoipel” Auditorium

Marina Gioti
Shipwreck Psychogeographies; Mapping the oceanic unconscious
Performance Lecture, 45’

Saturday, July 4, 9:30–10:00 p.m.
TIF-HELEXPO, Pavilion 2, 1st floor

Dimitris Ameladiotis
the ha(l)lophyte
Performance, 30’

Program of Screenings

The following films are screened MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art “Xanthippi Ηoipel” Auditorium, unless otherwise stated next to the screening time.

Tuesday, June 30, 5–11 p.m.

The following series of films will be screened twice: time slots 5–8 p.m. and 8–11 p.m.

TIF: The Pavilion of the City by Alexandros Litsardakis (Greece, 2026, 33′)

U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025, 23′)

A sickness with no cure. Panos Koutrouboussis by George and Iraklis Mavroidis (Greece, 2022, 22′34″)

From one bouzoukia place to the next by Panos Koutrouboussis (Greece, 1962, 13′)

Koursal by Nikos Theodosiou (Greece, 2006, 60′)

Follow Them: Teos Romvos & Chara Pelekanou by Evi Kalogiropoulou (Greece, 2020, 25′)

Wednesday, July 1, 5–11 p.m.

TIF: The Pavilion of the City by Alexandros Litsardakis (Greece, 2026, 33′)

U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025, 23′)

Starting at 6 p.m. is a tribute to filmmaker, set designer, costume designer and artist of the Czech New Wave Ester Krumbachová, with an introduction by Biennale 9 curator Nadja Argyropoulou, and a screening of three films to which Krumbachová contributed in various capacities [the only feature film she directed, Murdering the Devil (1970, 75′), was screened in December 2025, in the context of the 14th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, through a collaboration of Biennale 9 with the Ester Krumbachová Archive, the Czech National Film Archive in Prague, and the Greek Film Archive, as well as during the Biennale’s opening weekend, on May 24]. The tribute to Krumbachová, continued on July 2, is realized in cooperation with the Czech National Film Archive, Prague, and curator Sylva Poláková (who has also written the films’ descriptions):

Ikarie XB 1 by Jindřich Polák (Czechoslovakia, 1963, 88′)

Daisies [Sedmikrásky] by Věra Chytilová (Czechoslovakia, 1966, 73′)

We Eat the Fruit of the Trees of Paradise [Ovoce stromů rajských jíme] by Věra Chytilová (Czechoslovakia, Belgium, 1969, 96′)

Thursday, July 2, 5–11 p.m.

The second part of the tribute to Ester Krumbachová includes the screening of the following two more films, to which she contributed in various capacities:

Diamonds of the Night [Démanty noci] by Jan Němec (Czechoslovakia, 1964, 67′)

The Party and the Guests [O slavnosti a hostec] by Jan Němec (Czechoslovakia, 1966, 71′)

Return to Bog Walk by Cecilia Bengolea (2025–26, 26′)

Surrealist Happening by Dimos Theos (Greece, 1983, 144′)

Thursday, July 2, 8:45–9:45 p.m. at Apollon Open-air Movie Theater

TIF: The Pavilion of the City by Alexandros Litsardakis (Greece, 2026, 33′)

The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the creator and Biennale 9 curator Nadja Argyropoulou.

Friday, July 3, 5–11 p.m.

A sickness with no cure. Panos Koutrouboussis by George and Iraklis Mavroidis (Greece, 2022, 22′34″)

From one bouzoukia place to the next by Panos Koutrouboussis (Greece, 1962, 13′)

Koursal by Nikos Theodosiou (Greece, 2006, 60′)

Acts and Intermissions by Abigail Child (USA, 2017, 56′)

The Encampments by Michael T Workman and Kei Pritsker (USA/Palestine, 2025, 83′)

We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher by Simon Poulter and Sophie Mellor (UK, 2025, 65′)

Saturday, July 4, 3–6 p.m. and 8–11 p.m.

TIF: The Pavilion of the City by Alexandros Litsardakis (Greece, 2026, 33′)

U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025, 23′)

Daphni by Angelos Prokopiou & George Hoyningen-Huene (Greece, 1951, 17′)

L’Apocalypse a déjà eu lieu (Whispers of Extinction) by Stany Cambot / Echelle Inconnue (France, 2025, 54’)

[6–8 p.m. screenings are interrupted for the performance lecture]

Daphni by Angelos Prokopiou & George Hoyningen-Huene (Greece, 1951, 17′)

Surrealist Happening by Dimos Theos (Greece, 1983, 144′)

Sunday, July 5, 4–11 p.m.

TIF: The Pavilion of the City by Alexandros Litsardakis (Greece, 2026, 33′)

U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025, 23′)

Starting at 5 p.m.is a tribute to Greek filmmaker Kostas Sfikas, with an introduction by Biennale 9 curator Nadja Argyropoulou, and a screening of five of his films (the first one in its public premiere) and an interview of the director:

The Battle of Prague by Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 2000, 12′30″)

Voices and haunts of Rebetiko by Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 1981, 20′)

The Poetry of Andreas Empirikos by Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 1982, 25′)

Lament for Jani Christou by Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 1980, 19′)

Interview of Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 40′25″)

Model by Kostas Sfikas (Greece, 1974, 90′)

Acts and Intermissions by Abigail Child (USA, 2017, 56′)

Sunday, July 5, 10 p.m. at TIF-HELEXPO, Pavilion 2, ground floor (ring area)

Playing Otherwise. The Film (the prelude) by Iria Vrettou (Greece, 2025, 13′17″)

Playing Otherwise, The Film by Vera Chotzoglou (Greece, 2026, 45′)

Closing Party

Sunday, July 5, 11 p.m.

TIF-HELEXPO, outside Pavilion 2

After the completion of the screenings inside Pavilion 2 at TIF-HELEXPO, the Closing Party outside the pavilion will feature a DJ set by UROK. UROK, aka Urok Shirhan, is an Athens-based artist, researcher and DJ working at the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory.

News Image

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

News Type

News-Announcements

Attachments

RIS9_Final Week Program Outline ENG.pdf (1.53 MB)

RIS9_Final Week Program Descriptions ENG.pdf (1.66 MB)

Πέρα από τον καμβά. Επιλογές έργων από τη μόνιμη συλλογή

dimitra.samsaki — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:15:57 +0000

Beyond the canvas. Selections of artworks from the permanent collection dimitra.samsaki Fri, 07/17/2026 - 13:21

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Tue, 07/21/2026 - 08:40

End Date

Sun, 08/23/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

A new exhibition dedicated to contemporary Greek artistic creation from the 1960s to the present is on show from 21 July until 23 August, 2026, at MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary under the title "Beyond the canvas". The artworks on display by 20 prominent Greek artists are part of a grand donation by collector Leonidas Beltsios and are now integrated into the Museum’s permanent collection, substantially enriching its capability to narrate the paths and transformations of Greek art over the recent decades.

Literally and metaphorically… beyond the canvas, with elements and artistic echoes from Paris, Rome, London and New York, the exhibition traces the gradual expansion of the concept of the artwork: from transcending the traditional boundaries of painting and exploring matter and the object, to the shift toward action, participation, social relations, and the new forms of materiality in the contemporary world. The exhibition also highlights the diverse aspects of an art form that constantly redefines its mediums, functions, and relationships with the viewer. The artists transform matter, space, memory, everyday life, and experience itself into fields of artistic research.

The donation by Leonidas Beltsios represents a significant contribution to the Museum’s permanent collection, reinforcing its role as an institution dedicated to the preservation, study, and promotion of contemporary Greek art. The exhibition is not merely an initialpresentation of new acquisitions, but a new opportunity to read art history through a cohesive body of artworks that now belongs to the public cultural heritage.

Artists: Dimitris Alithinos, Panos Charalambous, Danil, Stavros Diakoumis, Vaggelis Dimitreas, Christina Dimitriadis, Cris Gianakos, Vangelis Gokas, Giorgos Hadjimichalis, Eleni Kamma, Nikos Kessanlis, Dimitris Kozaris, Yorgos Lazogas, Michael Michaeledes, Nikos Navridis, Maria Papadimitriou, Diamantis Sotiropoulos, Thanasis Totsikas, Giorgos Tsakiris, Giorgos Xenos

Curated by: Thouli Misirloglou, Artistic director of MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art / Katerina Syroglou, Art Historian, MOMUS Curator

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

9η Μπιενάλε Σύγχρονης Τέχνης Θεσσαλονίκης | Πρόγραμμα Εγκαινίων

dimitra.samsaki — Sat, 23 May 2026 10:39:55 +0000

9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art | Οpening Program dimitra.samsaki Sat, 05/23/2026 - 14:04

9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art

“everything must change. Radical Intelligence. Thessaloniki 9”

Opening Program

Saturday, May 23

TIF-HELEXPO, Pavilions 2 & 3

19:00–24:00 Public opening & events

Performance “From Vardaris to Omonia” by VASKOS

Performance by Mochi Georgiou in Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou’s installation, “In the wild”

Program of film screenings

MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art

Acts and Intermissions by Abigail Child (USA, 2017)

BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions by Kahlil Joseph (USA, 2025)

The Encampments by Michael T Workman and Kei Pritsker (USA/Palestine, 2025)

Herbicidal Warfare in Gaza (2019) and No Traces of Life (2026)” by Forensic Architecture

U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025)

We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher by Simon Poulter and Sophie Mellor (UK, 2025)

Murdering the Devil by Ester Krumbachová (Czechoslovakia, 1970)

TIF:The Pavilion of the City (Greece, 2026) by Alexandros Litsardakis

22:00

TIF-HELEXPO, Pavilion 10

Rap Riot feat. Dolly Vara, Ladele, Penny, Sara ATH, video by Iria

Sunday, May 24

10:30–13:00

HELEXPO, Pavilions 2 & 3

Gathering and talk among present artists, Biennale 9 curator Nadja Argyropoulou, and Professor and Biennale catalogue essayist T.J. Demos

14:00–19:30

Kardia Stadium

Three-sided football game as part of the project “Playing Otherwise”, featuring the self-organized teams FC Abalos, Becazzes FC, Faltsa FC, and Muhabeti FC, hosted by the Municipality of Thermi – National Youth Capital 2026

Special opening hours:

23 May: 19:00 – 24:00

24 May: 10:00 – 22:00

Curated by Nadia Argyropoulou

Free admission

News Image

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

News Type

News-Announcements

9η Μπιενάλε Σύγχρονης Τέχνης Θεσσαλονίκης | όλα πρέπει να αλλάξουν. ΡΝΣ9

dimitra.samsaki — Sun, 17 May 2026 07:28:42 +0000

9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art | everything must change. RIS9 dimitra.samsaki Sun, 05/17/2026 - 10:42

May 23 — July 5, 2026

curated by

Nadja Argyropoulou

Organized/implemented by

MOMUS–Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki

Venues
– Thessaloniki International Fair – HELEXPO, Pavilions 2 & 3, 154 Egnatia Av., 54636 Thessaloniki
– MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art, 154 Egnatia Av., TIF-HELEXPO premises, 54636 Thessaloniki
– Kalochori Lagoon, Axios Delta National Park, 57009 Thessaloniki

Press and professional preview: May 22
Public opening events: May 23–24

Titled “everything must change. Radical Intelligence. Saloniki 9,” curated by independent curator Nadja Argyropoulou and organized by MOMUS, the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is announcing its rationale, artists, participants, and events.

what

Biennale 9 engages with a common(place), yet (re)current, urgent and plural demand, “everything must change.” With its punchiness, it may feel like a revolutionary cry and echo like an empty slogan, ring like rage bait and work like a charm; there is something in it for everyone, and it does not belong to anyone exclusively. It is a phrase that is now, more than ever, wielded by social revolutionaries and technofeudalists alike, by persecuted activists and fascist-adjacent demagogues, by rival social classes and diametrically opposed collective forms of expression, by countercultures and institutional propaganda. It is being used to erase the gap between the home and the streets, the click and the walk, to highjack ambivalence and twist solidarity.

Biennale 9 engages with the incommensurability between our available vocabularies and that which we are asked to describe and live, as well as with art’s ambivalent place, central and marginal at the same time, in a world of violent shifts and widening inequalities. It engages with forms of playful resistance, with fugitive tactics of dismantling and solidarity, with the feedback loop of call and response, or what Arthur Jafa has described as the “quantum dimension of emancipation.”

It is cast as a para-biennale that acknowledges, integrates in its formation paradoxes of enclosure and escape, takes pleasure in errant paths and time warps, and sides with tactics of joyful militancy and the intimate labor of attending to the unrecognized and repressed, the peculiar and the eerie.

If indeed, “in the face of new tyrannies encroaching, we should use art not to ‘ask questions’ but to give audacious answers that nobody asked for” (as per Luce deLire), Βiennale 9 enters by experimenting with an anarchy of answers, refusing the proper and the proposed in outright censorship but also beyond its obvious mandates.

It suggests, through the works, its rationale, and the choice of its venues, a kind of radical intelligence (hence the shorthand “RI”), and sides with a non-fascist AI that does not reproduce forms of dominance but supports autonomy and freedom based on collective activity and suppressed knowledges.

If new solidarities and vocabularies, a “social otherwise,” need to be crafted in order to change life shaped by genocidal capitalism, then Biennale 9 wishes to explore the distance between the utterly improbable and the possible set forth by this need, experiment with the unfolding, metamorphic possibility of this shared refusal-in-solidarity, of the aesthetic sociality emerging as one possible response.

Thus, it chooses to be inspired by Saidiya Hartman on the small scale of Black life, where waywardness is “the avid longing for a world not ruled by master, man or the police . . . the social poesis that sustains the dispossessed . . . a short entry on the possible.”

The shorthand “S9” in Biennale 9’s title evokes a popular, older, eastern in origin, oral name of Thessaloniki (Saloniki), thereby inserting in the Biennale’s utterance a double movement, towards and away from the city, an attempt to foster a sense of togetherness — however temporarily — with Thessaloniki’s obscured, neglected spaces, agents, ghosts, and symbols of life, as well as to traverse the elements that link Assata Shakur’s letter to the Pope with Rimbaud’s poems, Dinos Christianopoulos’s Vardari with Emma Goldman, the critique of fascism as a politics of hate that is written in the language of love, as per Sara Ahmed, with the gallows humor of Beckett and the radicality of Pasolini, a creator that has been honored repeatedly in the north of the Greek south.

Through its shared utterances, visual frequencies and vibrations, terrible mixtures and abundance of f(r)ictions and glitches; through its peripheral and precarious position in the economies of the artworld, Biennale 9 employs a mode of close narration, embracing the stance of the (ins)urgent. It employs the method of critical fabulation and is formed improvisationally by what it proposes and explores.

The essayist of the catalogue of Biennale 9 and interlocutor of its curator, professor T. J. Demos, notes: “Speculative fabulations of emancipatory futurity take shape in the ruins. . . . These are sites of contradiction where the aesthetic becomes situational, tactical — a terrain for struggle. In the convergence of art and politics, the question is not whether resistance is possible, but how it will now be composed, at what cost, to whom. . . . Small steps matter, even when everything must change.”

If, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes, “the revolution is like housework — you have to do it every day,” then the 9th Biennale of Contemporary Art “everything must change. RIS9” wishes to be part of this every day and, while exploring it, to encompass a proposition for life itself.

how and with whom

Since its prelude in the fall of 2025 about the revolutionary and multifaceted possibilities of science fiction, Biennale 9 is comprised of all kinds of works that explore divergent, or even contradictory stories, ways to speak truth to power; works that suggest when to rant and how to whisper, when to laugh and how to love. The exhibition is primarily taking place in between them, instead of within each individual one, in their visible and invisible connections and collisions.

The exhibition features works by:

Basma al-Sharif, Minos Argyrakis (†1998), Meriem Bennani, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, The Callas (Lakis & Aris Ionas), Leonidas Christakis (†2009), Disobedience Archive, Sofia Dona, Errands Group, Stelios Faitakis (†2023), Alexis Fidetzis, Forensic Architecture, Matsi Hatzilazarou (†1987) with Andreas Embirikos (†1975), Pierre Huyghe, Arthur Jafa, Christos Karakolis, Maria Karavela (†2012), Dionisis Kavallieratos, Katerina Komianou, Dimitris Korres, Panos Koutrouboussis (†2019), Maria Kriara, Stefanos Levidis, Ligia Lewis, Le Nemesiache, Eva Papamargariti, Nikos Gravriil Pentzikis (†1993), Agnieszka Polska, Oliver Ressler, Ben Rivers, Kostas Sfikas (†2009), Jakob Steensen, Eleni Tomadaki, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Nanos Valaoritis (†2019), VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas, Kostas Tzimoulis), Marina Velisioti, Lewis Walker, Phillip Warnell & Juri Akiyama, Marie Wilson (†2017), Anna Zemánková (†1986), and an anonymous work [Anon., Zante (?), 18th c., Three-Faced Christ, Loverdos Collection (L 434/CL 429), Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens].*

The main part of the exhibition also includes the following installations:

Pan Daimonium. surrealism as a state of mind, with works by Samuel Beckett, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Nicolas Calas, Marcel Duchamp, Nikos Engonopoulos, Max Ernst, Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Mario Prassinos, Jean Tinguely, et. al. This section also features the largely unknown art film Daphni (1951, dir. Angelos Prokopiou & George Hoyningen-Huene) and Dimos Theos’s documentary Surrealist Happening (1983) about the movement in Greece.

The Museum of Friendship, with works from the collection of Jean-Marie Drot (1929–2015) as housed in the island of Ios.

Earth in Turmoil and Agitprop machines, with works of the Russian Avant-Garde from the G. Costakis Collection, MOMUS-Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki. This section also features the avant-garde animated film Interplanetary Revolution (1924) – the first film that was produced by the animation studio of the State Committee for Technical Cinematography (GosTechKino).

Flipper Zone. Playing against the spectacle, with original publications and reproductions by the Situationist International and Guy Debord, Jacqueline de Jong, Asger Jorn, Ivan Chtcheglov, and works in various media by Nikos Arvanitis, Echelle Inconnue, Experimental Jetset, Forensic Architecture, Marina Gioti (lecture performance), Maria Papanikolaou, Eva Stefani, Hito Steyerl. This section is co-curated by Nadja Argyropoulou and Vanessa Theodoropoulou.

Flights, a series of curated reading spaces within the exhibition, where visitors can read (or listen to) texts, graphic novels, poems, books, archives, verses. Among them, one space is dedicated to poet and author Katerina Gogou (1940–1993) and another to artist Maria-Electra Zoglopitou (1970–1997). There are also Flights curated by the Temporary Academy of Arts (PAT) under the title “ResigNation / A script on the dead,” and by Basma al-Sharif.

Time-based works include:

Rap Riot — a music work/event, commissioned by Biennale 9 to performers Ladelle, Dolly Vara, Sara ATH, Penny & Iria (in visuals) for the public opening on May 23 at 10 p.m.

Playing Otherwise — a project conceived by Biennale 9 and realized with Heinrich Böll Foundation - Thessaloniki Office and Another Football, aiming to claim the sport commons and celebrate the revolutionary potential of play. A game of 3-sided football will be realized among self-organized teams FC Abalos, Becazzes FC, Faltsa FC, Muhabeti FC on May 24, at 3:30–5:30 p.m., at the football stadium of Kardia, hosted by the Municipality of Thermi – National Youth Capital 2026.

Wayward Waters — a series of events (performances, lectures, public interventions) that will unfold over the course of the entire Biennale, starting on May 22 with the activation of public water fountains within the wider TIF-HELEXPO area via two performances: The DJ lecture In Overflow by Chara Stergiou and the lecture-performance Tap into it: water is personal by Chris Vrettos and VASKOS. The series is realized in cooperation with Greenpeace Greece and its broader “See you at the fountain” project, TIF-HELEXPO, and several other cultural platforms and civil society entities of Thessaloniki. The program includes a visit to the Biennale 9 venue of Kalochori Lagoon & Axios Delta National Park, a ride up to the Chalastra mussel farms, stops, walks, talks, performances, and interventions by cooperating entities, including iSea, Greek Biotope Wetland Centre (EKBY), and Thermaikos Gulf Protected Areas Management Authority.

Moving in Riot — a program of film screenings that was initiated at the Biennale prelude in October 2025, with collaborations with the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Greek Film Archive, featuring works by: Cecilia Bengolea, George and Iraklis Mavroidis, Valentin Noujeim, Nikos Theodosiou, Dimos Theos, et al. The program will unfold throughout the duration of Biennale 9, at the MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art “Xanthippi Ηoipel” Auditorium, and will be announced progressively. Especially for the three days of the exhibition opening, it will include the following works: Acts and Intermissions by Abigail Child (USA, 2017), BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions by Kahlil Joseph (USA, 2025), The Encampments by Michael T Workman and Kei Pritsker (USA/Palestine, 2025), Herbicidal Warfare in Gaza (2019) and No Traces of Life (2026) by Forensic Architecture, U.F.O. Lost in HEAVEN by Errands Group (Greece, 2025), We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher by Simon Poulter and Sophie Mellor (UK, 2025), Murdering the Devil by Ester Krumbachová (Czechoslovakia, 1970), and TIF: The Pavilion of the City (Greece, 2026) by Alexandros Litsardakis commissioned by Biennale 9.

In Motion is a program of performances inaugurated with the Aerites Dance Company intervention DETH arthó last October. It included Mephisto Me Studio’s live tagging of used art canvas bags with the Biennale logo, as well as events by the Mamagea Environmental Organization.

Dimitris Ameladiotis is participating in Biennale 9 with his performance the ha(l)lophyte, which will be initially presented at the Axios Delta National Park on May 23, to be repeated later during the Biennale.

The artistic duo VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis) will present their performance From Vardari to Omonoia, with the participation of college students from Thessaloniki (May 22 & 23, TIF-HELEXPO, Pavilion 2, ground floor). The performance is staged with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development.

During the opening, the audience will be able to see robotic and human performers in live interaction within the installation In the wild by Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou. Performer: Mochi Georgiou.

The program of enactments and work activations will be continued and enriched throughout the Biennale.

where

The venues that are activated by Biennale 9 co-create a crucial space of (d)rift:

• Buildings within the Thessaloniki International Fair – HELEXPO complex that highlight the site’s ties to modern Greece’s foundational socio-economic narratives and political ceremonies since the 1960s, as well as its current significance as the battleground of competing plans around the function and future of public space. Situated there and hosting part of the Biennale is also the MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art, home to the Alexander Iolas collection.

• The unique Kalochori Lagoon on Thessaloniki’s western outskirts, a landscape shaped by immigrant communities, industrial growth, and the gradual emergence of a wetland as a result of land subsidence, groundwater depletion, and the mixing of river and sea waters. Now part of the Axios Delta National Park, the lagoon is rich in rare biodiversity, hosts more-than-human activity, and participates in contradictory narratives of “symbiotic living” as the city inexorably expands to this side too.

TEXT & IMAGES

VIDEO

You may view/download the material by clicking the hyperlinks.

For the latest information on Biennale 9 participants, events, projects, etc., visit thessalonikibiennale.com

Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Visual Identity: studio precarity
Architectural Design: Y2K Architects
Curator’s Assistant: Evelyn Zempou
Lighting Design: Edeko Lighting Studio
Audiovisual Consultant: Makis Faros
Texts Copy-editing & Translation: Fotini Pipi
MOMUS Production Team: Angeliki Charistou, Eftychia Petridou, Silia Fasianou

The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Arts is co-funded by the European Union (NSRF – “Central Macedonia” Operational Program).

Visiting Hours:

Tuesday through Friday 16:00–22:00
Saturday & Sunday 14:00–22:00
Closed on Monday

Opening Special Visiting Hours:

May 22: 18:30–23:00 | May 23: 19:00–24:00 | May 24: 10:00–22:00

News Image

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

News Type

News-Announcements

9η Μπιενάλε Σύγχρονης Τέχνης Θεσσαλονίκης | «όλα πρέπει να αλλάξουν. Ριζοσπαστική Νοημοσύνη. Σαλονίκη 9»

dimitra.samsaki — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:23:59 +0000

9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art | "everything must change. Radical Intelligence. Saloniki 9" dimitra.samsaki Wed, 04/01/2026 - 12:30

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Sat, 05/23/2026 - 20:40

End Date

Sun, 07/05/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

main exhibition dates: May 23 – July 5, 2026
public opening events: May 23 & 24, 2026

main venues

Thessaloniki International Fair – Helexpo
Pavilions 2 & 3, 54636 Thessaloniki

MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art
154 Egnatia Av. (TIF-Helexpo premises), 54636 Thessaloniki

Kalochori Lagoon
Axios Delta National Park, 57009 Thessaloniki

Full opening program: https://www.momus.gr/en/news/9i-mpienale-syghronis-tehnis-thessalonikis-programma-egkainion

With the ambiguous title, everything must change. RIS9, the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art is organized by MOMUS and curated by independent curator Nadja Argyropoulou.

It engages with a common(place), yet (re)current, urgent, and plural demand that, with its punchiness, can feel like a revolutionary cry and echo like an empty slogan, ring like a rage bait and work like a charm; there is something in it for everyone, and it does not belong to anyone. It is a phrase that is now, more than ever, wielded by social revolutionaries and technofeudalists alike, by persecuted activists and fascist-adjacent demagogues, by rival social classes and diametrically opposed collective forms of expression, by countercultures and institutional propaganda. It is being used to erase the gap between the home and the streets, the click and the walk, to highjack ambivalence and twist solidarity.

As its curator notes, “Through its shared utterances, visual frequencies, think pieces, terrible mixtures and abundance of f(r)ictions and glitches; through its peripheral place and minor scale in the artworld; through its precarious position in the structural container and its economies, Biennale 9 employs a mode of close narration and is marked by what it proposes. It engages with the incommensurability between our available vocabularies and that which we are asked to describe; with forms of play, with fugitive tactics of dismantling, with collective magic, the feedback loop of call and response, or what Arthur Jafa has described as the ‘quantum dimension of emancipation.’ This ninth edition is cast as a para-biennale that acknowledges paradoxes of enclosure and escape, takes pleasure in errant paths and improvisation, and sides with tactics of joyful militancy and the intimate labor of attending to the unrecognized. If indeed, ‘in the face of new tyrannies encroaching, we should use art not to “ask questions” but to give audacious answers that nobody asked for’ (as per Luce deLire), Βiennale 9 enters by flipping questions, experimenting with an anarchy of answers, refusing the proper and the proposed in outright censorship but also beyond its obvious mandates. It takes a bold stance on the power of imagination, suggests a kind of intelligence that is radical (the shorthand ‘RI’), and sides with a non-fascist AI (as per Dan McQuillan) that does not reproduce forms of dominance but supports autonomy and freedom based on collective activity and suppressed knowledges.

If new solidarities and vocabularies, a ‘social otherwise,’ need to be crafted in order to change life shaped by genocidal capitalism, and the tools cannot be those of the master’s own, then Biennale 9 wishes to experiment with the unfolding, metamorphic possibility of shared refusal. It chooses to be inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s method of ‘critical fabulation’ and take recourse to her research on waywardness as ‘the avid longing for a world not ruled by master, man or the police. . . the social poesis that sustains the dispossessed. . . a short entry on the possible.’

It is made by sensorial manifestations of aesthetic sociality, works that imagine into existence ways to refuse, riot and explore un-settling paths and divergent stories, ways to speak truth to power and spell difference that does not devolve into separability; works that suggest when to rant and how to whisper, when to laugh and how to love. If ‘the revolution is like housework — you have to do it every day’ (G. C. Spivak) — then everything must change. RIS9 wishes to be part of this every day and, while exploring it, to attempt a bewildering, vibrant proposition.”

The shorthand “S9” evokes a popular, older, eastern in origin, name of Thessaloniki ( Saloniki ), thereby inserting in the Biennale’s utterance a double movement, towards and away from the city, an attempt to foster a sense of togetherness — however temporarily — with Thessaloniki’s obscured, neglected spaces, agents, ghosts, and symbols. After a prelude realized during October–November 2025 around the revolutionary potential of science fiction (“Plot twist: science fiction as change”), and through a host of interim cooperations (with the Thessaloniki Film & Documentary Festivals, as well as with the Greek Film Archives) and off-site manifestations, the Biennale will realize its main exhibition between May 23 and July 5, 2026.

The venues that will host it co-create a crucial space of (d)rift:

• Buildings within the Thessaloniki International Fair–Helexpo complex that highlight the site’s ties to modern Greece’s foundational socio- economic narratives and political ceremonies since the 1960s, as well as its current significance as the battleground of competing plans around the function and future of public space; situated there and hosting part of the Biennale is also the MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art, home to the Alexander Iolas collection.

Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Visual Identity: studio precarity
Architectural Design: Y2K Architects
Curator’s Assistant: Evelyn Zempou
MOMUS Production Team: Angeliki Charistou, Silia Fasianou, Eftychia Petridou

Organization and Implementation: MOMUS-Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki
Co-organizer: TIF-Helexpo
Partners: Municipality of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Film Festival
Creative Partners: Heinrich Böll Foundation -Thessaloniki Office, Another Football, Mamagea

The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Arts is co-financed by the European Union (NSRF – “Central Macedonia” Operational Programme).

Nadja Argyropoulou short bio

Nadja Argyropoulou is an independent curator, art historian and writer based in Athens and working internationally. She holds a BA in History and Archaeology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and an MA in Art History and Theory, with focus on late Surrealism, from the University of Essex, UK. Argyropoulou has curated numerous exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects in Greece and abroad and has worked with a wide range of cultural institutions and independent art entities. She researches entanglements of the social and the artistic, ecocritical practices and forms of de-growth, neglected archives and deviant narratives. She has written texts on contemporary art in books, art catalogues and the press. She is a founding member of the artistic/research- scientific collective Saprofyta, and a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and of IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art).

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

Ευρωπαϊκή Pop. Η μάχη των Ρεαλισμών και των Αφηγήσεων

dimitra.samsaki — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:19:42 +0000

European Pop. The battle of Realisms and Narratives dimitra.samsaki Thu, 02/05/2026 - 17:21

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Wed, 02/11/2026 - 20:40

End Date

Sun, 04/12/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

Opening: Wednesday 18 February 2026, 19:30

How do we understand the human form, society, and the role of art in social change?

After the abstract trends that dominated art up until the 1950s, the recognizable image and form returned in the 1960s and 1970s, offering alternative narratives. At the heart of the need for a renewal of realism and the expressiveness of the image, in a world moving away from the fundamental need of art to represent human existence, many artists challenged traditional values of society and the art world.

New narratives portrayed moments of everyday life, commented on social or political issues, recognized the influence of advertising, mass culture, and the media, and reflected the speed, contradictions, and complexities of contemporary life. New forms of realism emerged, not as copies of reality, but as representations of the internal psychological conflicts of the individual and social failures.

The exhibition attempts a journey through works and artists from the European sphere, highlighting the struggle of representational narratives and shedding new light on the world of reality and objects. All of them were either connected to movements such as Nouvelle Figuration or the New Realists group of France, or their work exists in the echo of these movements.

Their works, in the way they recall social alienation, political upheaval, and the contradictions of human nature, retain their power not only as a historical artistic phenomenon but also as a compass for contemporary art and life.

The works of art presented in the exhibition come from the MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art collections and private collections of
Stelios and Anastassis Garipis.

Curated by: Thouli Misirloglou, Artistic Director of MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art

Assistant curator: Katerina Syroglou

Artists: Arman, Eduardo Arroyo, Danil (Panagopoulos), Erik Dietman, Erró, Hervé Fischer, Raymond Hains, Nikos Kessanlis, Peter Klasen, Jacques Monory, Pavlos (Dionysopoulos), Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Chryssa Romanos, Antonio Segui, Vassilis Skylakos, Yvon Taillandier, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé.

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

Martial Raysse. Sinéma

dimitra.samsaki — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:16:15 +0000

Martial Raysse. Sinéma dimitra.samsaki Thu, 02/05/2026 - 17:18

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Wed, 02/11/2026 - 20:40

End Date

Sun, 04/12/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

Opening: Wednesday 18 February 2026, 19:30

The world of Martial Raysse (Golfe-Juan, France, 1936), one of the most inventive artists of postwar European art, flows between dream and reality.

From the fluorescent objects and the pop aesthetic of the 1960s, when European and American art were searching for new forms and languages, to the outdoor works and masked portraits, his journey to this day is a continuous search between pop aesthetics, social observation, and personal immersion in art, with clear phases and transformations. Raysse's art speaks of life and imagination, a constant play between extroversion and introversion, societal critique and the personal magic of art.

Unwaveringly dedicated to art and the renewal of his mediums, materials, and practices, he is constantly experimenting. Behind his paintings, he often hides altered photography; he jumps from painting to cinema, and from cinema to painting.

At the core of the exhibition Martial Raysse. Sinéma is his lesser-known work, focusing on films and videos: it is where his art intersects with experimental cinema through the use of color, materiality, and everyday life as fields of experimentation. A brilliant self-taught craftsman himself, always alert to the new technologies of the time, he fully utilizes the vast possibilities offered by the groundbreaking audiovisual medium, starting from the early days of color television.

The human form, landscapes, mythology, humor, and the social and consumer realities of the 1960s —shaped by advertising, pop culture, and mass production— are consistently present, alongside multiple technical effects and his personal chromatic language, "Martialcolor," which reflects the intensity of pop art and the spectacular excess of cinematic Technicolor. Film and video, which transcend traditional production techniques, become a new form of painting. The exhibition, which invites the visitor to discover how the artist extends, through the moving image, his plastic and conceptual research, features films and videos created from 1966 to 2008. Between poetry, provocation, and formal freedom, his films reveal a coherent and deeply current work, in which each image — fixed or animated—participates in a global reflection on representation and our relationship to reality.

“For me, cinema is like a seismological record of all the images that pass through my mind”, he stated.

For the first time in Greece, the groundbreaking moving image works of Martial Raysse reveal an unknown side of a pioneering artist, where video and cinema intersect with painting, becoming material, gesture, and a tool for rethinking contemporary visual culture.

The exhibition is coorganised by Fonds Martial Raysse.

Curated by: Thouli Misirloglou, Artistic Director of MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Musuem of Contemporary Art Collections

Assistant Curator: Theodore Markoglou

Coorganiser

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

Pete Marifoglou. Τα χρόνια του Warhol ΧΧΧ

dimitra.samsaki — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 16:26:48 +0000

Pete Marifoglou. The Warhol years XXΧ dimitra.samsaki Fri, 01/23/2026 - 18:31

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Thu, 01/29/2026 - 20:40

End Date

Sun, 04/12/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

Opening: Thursday 29 January 2026, 19:00

Erotic scenes from adult films, which today may appear more or less culturally faded. Individual faces, which today may appear more or less sad or happy. Harsh snapshots of cold executions of men and women, young and old, for minor differences or gender issues. All these are connected through the gaze of Pete Marifoglou, an extraordinarily sensitive receiver of human presence, in the exhibition under the title “Pete Marifoglou. The Warhol years XXX” presented in MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art, in Thessaloniki, from 29 January until 12 April 2026.

After seven decades in New York and European territories, having worked in photography, direction, and film production, having written poetry, music, and theater, and having showcased his work in photography exhibitions in France, Greece, the Netherlands, and Germany, Pete Marifoglou returns to his hometown, Thessaloniki, to inaugurate the Case Studio at MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art for 2026.

The solo exhibition at the Case Studio gallery in MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time in Greece his largely unpublished work, where he captures photographic views of particular pockets of New York’s social margins during the 1960s-1970s.

Marifoglou, a young student and later graduate of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, worked, among other things, on the low-budget film production sets for adult films produced by Andy Warhol’s legendary Factory production company. The mass production of low-budget pornographic films was one of Warhol’s ventures, as he experimented with raw cinematic ideas, radically diverging from mainstream cinema.

He focuses on analog black-and-white photography. At the same time, however, he focuses on the people, on the faces beyond their roles in the films. He knows their personal stories. His photographs, documents of both the films and the harsh social and cultural reality of New York, reveal the sensitivity of his artistic gaze, without pretension or shine.

Curated by: Thouli Misirloglou, Artistic Director of MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art

Assistant Curator: Katerina Syroglou

Pete Marifoglou (Panagiotis Marifoglou) was born in 1944 in Thessaloniki. His family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1950. Marifoglou lived in Manhattan and graduated from the Art and Design High School, with a major in Architecture.

In the early 1970s, Marifoglou began studying Film Directing and Screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts, under the guidance of Professor Jud Yalkut, a pioneering creator of experimental films. At the same university, he took photography courses with renowned photographers such as Duane Michals, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Diane Arbus. At the same time, he attended lectures by major figures in the arts and public life, such as Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Nam June Paik, Jonas Mekas, Stan Vanderbeek, James Stanley Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Elias Kazan, and Alfred Hitchcock. He continued his studies at the private university NYU, where he took courses in Film History and Anthropology.

Alongside photography, Marifoglou worked on creating short films, where he took on the roles of screenwriter, director, composer, and actor. He co-starred with the legendary underground film star Taylor Mead and also worked as a cinematographer on The Art Student, a production of Andy Warhol and directed by Alfonso Ciancarelli.

*Part of the exhibition contains material that may not be suitable for minors.

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

65+ Η εφηβεία μιας εικαστικής επιμέλειας

dimitra.samsaki — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 10:40:02 +0000

65+ The Adolescence of a Visual Curatorship dimitra.samsaki Tue, 12/23/2025 - 13:39

Exhibition Type

Temporary

Image

Start Date

Thu, 01/08/2026 - 08:00

End Date

Sun, 05/31/2026 - 20:40

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Body

EXTENSION UNTIL 31 MAY 2026

Opening: Thursday 8 January 2026, 18:00

A white, empty space at MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art and its collections were the literal and metaphorical meeting and starting points for the participants of the workshop "Together We Curate!”, the fruit of which is the exhibition entitled "65+ The Adolescence of a Visual Curatorship" which is presented from 8 January to 15 March, 2026.

People coming from different backgrounds, professional fields, studies, and life paths, with a cohesive element of love for art, aesthetics, and creation and sharing the common feature of being 65+, began their journey into the unknown and fascinating world of visual art curation with the museum's people as companions, in the museum space that was given to them as blank slate to speak about what touches them most.

The team came into direct contact with the museum's collections, discovered less expected dimensions of the artworks, explored theoretical and practical issues of collection management and contemporary exhibition approaches, provided practical answers to visitors' persistent questions, and ultimately experienced group curatorial practice and the co-creation of a real exhibition that narrates the stories that the team felt inspired by.

The workshop “Together We Curate!” consists one of the first bold attempts at participatory exhibition curation with the museum audience in the field of culture in Greece. Through this specific project MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art celebrates the diversity and openness, as well as the experience and perspective of the public, implementing co-decision processes that actively promote the democratization of culture. The first implementation took place at the MOMUS-Experimental Center for the Arts in 2021.

Scientific Supervision – Coordination: Thouli Misirloglou, Artistic Director of MOMUS-Museum of Contemporary Art

Curatorial team / Members of the workshop: Dimitris Alexandrou, Fenia Anyfantaki, Aspa Charisi, Christina Darda, Glyka Fista-Rasoglou, Dimitris Georgiou, Tasoula Ignataki, Maria Kampouridou, Dimitris Kanonidis, Angela Kolokotroni, Alexandros Kolokotronis, Nikoleta Lazaridou, Tina Mpertzeletou, Metaxenia Nikolaidou, Georgia Papachristou, Christos Papachristou, Kaiti Papadimitriou, Giorgos Panagiotopoulos, Efi Petrou, Dimitra Polychronidou, Kallirroi Sarantiadou, Kyriaki Sidiropoulou, Charoula Syllaiou-Misirloglou, Tia Vanidi

Architectural & Graphic Design study: Stergios Galikas, Post-Spectacular Office

The project is implemented under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0” with funding from the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

Cover Image

Hide From Calendar

Do not hide

MOMusFlux

dimitra.samsaki — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:57:20 +0000

MOMusFlux dimitra.samsaki Thu, 12/04/2025 - 17:01

Space Image

Space Capacity

Up to 30 seated

Space Email

info.contemporary@momus.gr

Space Telephone

+30 2310 240 002

Body

Event type:

Conferences, talks, presentations, press conferences, corporate meetings

Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Space Gallery