WITHIN the context of Penny Siopis’ retrospective exhibition entitled For Dear Life, at EMST (National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens), two events have been planned: a talk with the artist Penny Siopis and with EMST Artistic Director Katerina Gregos, plus a screening of four films which the artist has selected. If you haven’t visited the Siopis retrospective yet, then why not combine it with these events and get a more indepth look at this artist’s amazing work. The retrospective runs till February 16.

Penny Siopis has selected four films by fellow South African filmmakers who, in different ways, engage concerns that have also been key to her work. The audience will gain a wider appreciation of the complex social and political relations in which Siopis’ production is embedded. The four films are: Milisuthando Bongela’s, Milisuthando (2023), Gabrielle Goliath’s, Chorus (2021),  William Kentridge’s, Mine (1991), and Liza Key’s, A Question of Madness (1999). The films will be screened in the presence of Penny Siopis on Thursday 23 January, 19.00 at the  Mezzanine’s Screening Room. Entrance: 4 euros. You can book your tickets here

As Penny Siopis’ acclaimed exhibition For Dear Life comes to a close (on February 16), ΕΜΣΤ invites to you to a presentation by the artist followed by a conversation with Katerina Gregos, Artistic Director of EMΣΤ and curator of the exhibition, about the artist’s life and work. Through an illustrated talk, Penny Siopis will delve into her artistic practice, her formative experiences and what she has called “a poetics of vulnerability”.  For fifty years Siopis has responded to, and reimagined, in complex, edgy, and multidimensional forms, the entangled histories through which she has lived, times marked by radical social and political change. Conjoining feminism, activism, anti-colonial critique into a rich artistic language informed by her Greek and South African roots, this is an opportunity for viewers to engage further in depth with the artist’s unique practice. The talk will take place at EMΣT on Thursday, February 6, 7pm. Free entrance.

Born in South Africa in 1953 to Greek parents, Siopis came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with her historically and culturally charged paintings that exercised a fierce critique against colonialism, apartheid, racism and sexism. She went on to experiment with other media such as installation and film, creating a rich, incisive and poignant body of work that has consistently engaged with the persistence and fragility of memory, notions of truth and accountability, the rights of women and the disenfranchised, the issue of vulnerability, and the complex entanglements of personal and collective histories.

For Dear Life. A Retrospective features work from each of Siopis’ major series, including the Cake (1980–1984) and History (1985–1995) paintings, Will (1997–), and Pinky Pinky (2002–2005), as well as a number of her celebrated experimental films, which combine found footage with personal archives and texts to produce poignant meditations on the political, personal and historical cornerstones that marked her life, and that of her home country also, during a time of socio-political change and rights-based struggles in South Africa and beyond. Furthermore, the exhibition  includes Will (1997- ) a monumental, autobiographical conceptual work-in-progress which will only be completed on the artist’s death. As part of this work, Siopis bequeaths a diverse collection of objects to beneficiaries of her choice: friends, family, collaborators from all over the globe. Will is an installation that includes over 700 objects that provide insight into the artist’s collecting habits and interests – artistic and vernacular  –  but also into her own personal history and experience, rooted in its own particular time, place and circumstance. The public will have the opportunity to discover a rich oeuvre in which there exists a perfect and meaningful balance between content and form. For the artist, materiality and process are inseparable from concept, meaning and ideas.

For 50 years Siopis has explored the politics of the body, grief and shame as they play out in her home country, South Africa. In the process she has established herself as one of the most important artistic voices of her generation on the African continent and beyond.

*Starting from February 2025, every first Thursday of the month the entrance to the Museum will be free from 18.00 to 22.00

* EMΣΤ is on Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str, former Fix factory. Nearest stop Syngrou-Fix. Check the museum’s website for more info and open hours here

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