8TH THESSALONIKI BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Exhibition “Christos Dikeakos. The world as an open studio”
MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Warehouse Α’, Pier Α’, Thessaloniki port area)
23 February – 04 June 2023
Opening: Thursday 23 February 2023, 20:00
Gallery walk with the photographer open to the public: Thursday 23 February 2023, 19:00
What can connect the suburbs of Vancouver in the late 1960s, the huge, felled tree trunks of Locarno coast and the First People ceremonies in Canada, with the nature along Attiki Odos in Athens, the views of fruit sorting, sound engineers recording the sound of trees and two women from Afghanistan and a little boy with the Acropolis and the Parthenon surrounded by scaffolding in the background? All of these may seem unrelated, but they have all captured the photographic eye of Greek-Canadian Christos Dikeakos, an important artist of the diaspora, and they are just some of his photographic series of the last five decades presented in his first retrospective exhibition in Greece, in the framework of the 8th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art.
The exhibition "Christos Dikeakos. The world as an open studio" is going to be presented at MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Warehouse A, Pier A, Thessaloniki port area), from 23 February to 4 June 2023.
The opening of the exhibition will be held on Thursday 23 February 2023 at 20:00 by the Mayor of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Zervas, who will honor the photographer for his artistic achievements.
On the same evening at 19:00, Christos Dikeakos will walk through the museum gallery with the public.
Born in Thessaloniki, Christos Dikeakos immigrated to Canada as a child to become a prominent figure in the Vancouver art scene as early as the 1970s. He is known for his work in photography, sculpture and art installations. He is a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and has received numerous awards and grants for his work. He has also taught at various universities and colleges in Canada.
Issues of memory, history and management of the natural and man-made environment are touched upon in his work through a perspective that seeks a deeper and different approach. His photographs capture the constant intrusion of culture on nature, with modern civilization spreading while shrinking native cultures.
Curator: Hercules Papaioannou, curator MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Christos Dikeakos short cv
Christos Dikeakos is a Canadian artist of Greek origin. Born in 1946 in Thessaloniki, where his father was working as an engineer at Ifanet industry, he moved to Vancouver at the age of nine. There, he studied Art and Art History at the University of British Columbia, where he met Sophie, his partner in life ever since. Dikeakos has contributed significantly to the development of the Vancouver Photoconceptualism “school”. In his work, he continually delves into local histories, the conditions of modernity and the socio-economic relations of specific places. His work has been exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally.
During his photographic project Sites and Place Names (1991, 2015) he became the first Canadian artist who photographed North American urbanscapes in order to engage in the pre-colonial histories of the place. The project expanded to Athens, Berlin, Saskatoon, and Thessaloniki. More recently, Dikeakos created the traveling exhibition Pâtisserie Duchamp / Puis-je fumer? (2011) for the McMaster Museum of Art, in which he unfolded his 40-year-old interest in the work and thoughts of Marcel Duchamp. In this project, he combined drawing, collage, sculpture, and photography, drawing on the tradition of the French American artist. Soon after, Nature Morte (2014) gave an in-depth representation of the economic and environmental issues of the Apple Orchards in the southern Okanagan region of British Columbia. Combined with photographic series such as Urban Nomadic Homelessness (2005-2009), it is evident that Dikeakos’ intention has always been to raise issues on the social and historical complexities of the urban inhabitations, and the nature of progress as opposed to the culture of the First People.
Alongside his artistic practices, Dikeakos and his family opened the restaurant Kozmas in Vancouver, the first Greek restaurant in the city to seek out authentic Greek cuisine. It became a success and a home for artists as Dikeakos, his wife Sophie and his sister Alexandra brought forward a quality of hospitality that go in line with his stance towards art, its social role, and the indigenous tradition.
In 2000, Dikeakos collaborated with architect Noel Best on a public commission in Vancouver, The Lookout. Today, his work is held in public collections such as the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Vorres Art Museum in Greece.
With the support:
Heinrich Böll Foundation Thessaloniki Office