A place of detention, an exhibition of the School of Fine Arts – 2024-02-20 20:46:17

IN THE BASEMENT OF THE ZOSIMAIA SCHOOL

The School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina is organizing the exhibition of the students of the Master’s Program “Exhibition Curation: Theoretical and Practical Approaches” of the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences, which will be hosted at the Zosimaia School-1st High School of Ioannina (“Old High School Men’s”, against the old KTEL) from January 18 to 24, 2024.

Opening: Thursday, January 18, 2024, 7:00 p.m.

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During the Second World War, the Axis powers committed a number of crimes that went unpunished: acts of violence against human life, physical integrity and individual and public property, but also crimes against humanity: mass murders, deportations, imprisonments, torture , persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds. Epirus, on the borders of conquered Greece, suffered many of the above. Commandos of the German “Edelweiss” division carried out executions and murders of civilians, rapes, destruction of houses, infrastructure, villages and settlements, and extensive looting. The city’s Jewish community was deported en masse to the German extermination camps where 92% of its members were killed. Thousands of Greeks were branded as “guerrillas”, “communists”, “suspected communists”, “suspected rebels” and were terrorized, imprisoned without trial, tortured and killed in reprisals of resistance action, which began with hostage-taking not only in isolation but also in total, with the inhabitants of entire villages.

Those arrested were taken to the basements of a historic Ioannina school, the neoclassical architectural jewel of the Zosimaa School, through whose desks thousands of Epirote students have passed since its foundation in 1828. People who were captured, detained, tortured and often deported to camps in Thessaloniki, were executed in retaliation for rebel actions or sent for forced labor in Germany and its occupied territories. The Life of the Occupation ceased to contribute to the education of children, it became a reservoir of victims for the implementation of reprisals, a storehouse of expendable lives.

The exhibition of the postgraduate students of the “Exhibition Curation: Theoretical and Practical Approaches” program of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina attempts to shed light on unknown and often unknown events that happened in the intimate space of the historic school. It explores the mnemonic traces of a difficult and traumatic past that the city of Ioannina gradually forgot in the whirlwind of post-war Greece’s adventures.

The exhibition is composed of photographic and surveillance material, archival evidence, inmate testimonies, oral and written, and a series of original visual works created by undergraduate and postgraduate visual arts students of the School of Fine Arts. Painting, video visuals, prints, installations, digital soundscapes and more memorialize the curatorial process and participate in the exhibition narrative.

In this complex public history project on the “difficult” legacy of the old Zosimaa School, students raise issues of managing collective memory and highlighting the lived experience of the victims, as well as the historical, social, artistic and educational significance of this unknown underground space for the present and the future of the city of Ioannina.

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Research, organization, editing: Fotini Dalkavoukis, Nancy Kamargiannis, Evdoxia Karagiannopoulou, Katerina Karras, Spyros Nakas, Agathi Pappa and Eleni Rizou, postgraduate students of the study program “Exhibition Curation: Theoretical and Practical Approaches” of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina

Supervision and coordination: Esther Solomon, Associate Professor of Museology, in collaboration with Nikos Artemis, Associate Professor of Digital Art Forms, Nikos Konstantinou, EDIP-IT and Evangelos Gokas, Professor of Painting and Dean of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina

Participating with visual works: Emilios Agorou, Tamta Antonova, Polixeni Apostolopoulou, Iosifina Argyrou, Konstantinos Gikas, Konstantinos Gonos, Andromachi Zacharias, Nena Kalpi, Yiannis Karagiannopoulos, Sotiris Katelaris, Olga Kosmidou, Konstantina Lytra, Evanthia Pallikaraki, Agathi Pappa, Konstantina Politis, Vasiliki Siatara, Naya Souli, Renos-Fotis Sinos, Christina Spiropoulou, Lisa Stoitsi, Vaso Sfairopoulou, Laura Tsiati Anastasia, Tsitsou, Georgia Christana.

Warm thanks to Alekos Raptis, historical researcher, Filimonas Karamitsos, journalist, and architect Matina Dedicousis.

With the kind support of: GAS-Historical Archives-Museum of Epirus, 1st Gymnasium of Ioannina, Region of Epirus, “Katogi Averof”

Exhibition duration: 18 to 24 January 2024

Opening hours: Friday 19/1, Monday 22/1, Tuesday 23/1, Wednesday 24/1: 17.00-21.00. Saturday 20/1 and Sunday 21/1: 11.00-19.00.

Old Zosimaia School, 1st Gymnasium of Ioannina, Zosimadon 1 (opposite old KTEL)

Opening: Thursday, January 18, 2024, 7:00 p.m.