Museum Alex Mylona – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibition “Τ.Α.Μ.Α. Superflow”, curated by art historian, Alexios Papazacharias. The exhibition will open on Saturday, June 21, 2014 at Museum Alex Mylona – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens and will run until October 26. The official opening will take place on Friday, June 27 at 20:00.

The exhibition is part of the platform of Maria Papadimitriou’s project “T.A.M.A.” (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All) and it features Maria Papadimitriou’s installation “Τ.Α.Μ.Α. Side effects” and the work of the young artists, created during the workshop “Inspire 2013: Metamorphosis”, which took place at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, in the fall of 2013. The project “Inspire-Thessaloniki Arts Festival” is implemented by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in the context of the Operational Programme for Macedonia-Thrace of the NSRF (National Strategic Reference Framework) and is co-funded by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).

Maria Papadimitriou’s installation is a DIY house, a hut, which also operates as an impromptu museum, showcasing artworks by anonymous artists that Papadimitriou has collected from various bazaars and flea markets, which constitute evidence of a particular and personal interpretation of Greek, Balkan and European history. The artworks by the young artists that are exhibited alongside and are created in dialogue with Maria Papadimitriou’s installation, are objects made mostly out of fabric leftovers, which serve as votive offerings and amulets.

According to the curator of the exhibition, Alexios Papazacharias:

It would be unfair to confine the artistic endeavours of Maria Papadimitriou by judging it solely by its results, as artand as artworks, merely as produced objects. Through closer observation and active participation (wherever this is possible) the audience of her work discovers that the final objects, despite their aesthetic excellence most of the time, are but fragmentary aspects of a general practice at whose centre lies man along with its history, and whose modus operandi is the systematic attempt of overthrowing the latter. In such a frame, Harry Potter meets the surrealist artist Nikos Engonopoulos to discuss painting, Frida Kahlo meets magazine models and the White Tower of Thessaloniki meets the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In these encounters, which constitute a paradox based on similarities and differences, Maria Papadimitriou appears to be occupied more with pointing out the similarities rather than highlighting the differences.

In a continuation of this logic, but through a more complex procedure, the T.A.M.A. project (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All) which began in 1998 and is still going today, brings the Roma closer to artists, architects and anthropologists, creates an autonomous museum for all and mostly for those who, because of being different, others or outsiders, find themselves external of official history, excluded from the mechanism of knowledge production and dissemination that the museum traditionally represents. But beyond this, it is the platform on which dialogue can commence between an excluded community and a society that must redefine its standards, its tolerance and the manner in which it handles anything characterized as foreign. The work of Maria Papadimitriou in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art is just such a case: a specially formed condition of acquaintance and acceptance, a shanty open to our eyes like a vitrine that does not sell anything but receives us, poor yet hospitable, surrounded by objects protecting us from the evil eye. Meanness and misery are not welcome here.

Participating young artists: Nicolas Paradiselo, Photoharrie, Danae Avaraki, Pelagia Andreadi, Katerina Velliou, Christos Vogiatzis, Nikolas Vyzovitis, Maria Galazoula, Despina Georgiadou, Paris Giachoustidis, Aggeliki Daga, Giorgos Diakos, Antigoni Theodorou, Dimitra Koutsianou, Maria Kotoula, Christos Martinis, Aggeliki Meli, Alexios Bouhri, Maria Panagiotou, Eleni Papadopoulou, Alexios Papazacharias, Evita Papazisi, Georgia Perdikouri - Papadopoulou, Anna Piatou, Katerina Saridaki, Konstantinos Skourletis, Elena Stamatogianni, Athina Feidaki, Sofia Florou - Arvaniti, Maria Foka.

Maria Papadimitriou was born in Athens in 1957. She lives and works in Athens and Volos, Greece. She studied visual arts at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA). In 2003 she won the DESTE prize for contemporary Greek art. In 2002 she represented Greece for the 25th edition of the São Paulo Biennial with the project T.A.M.A. (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All), an ongoing project still central to her artistic practice. Since 2001she is teaching visual arts at the Department of Architecture of University of Thessaly in Volos. Issues of identity, social integration and and exclusion are the recurring issues in her work. Her work has been presented in numerous shows internationally.