iLiana Fokianaki

iLiana Fokianaki (born in 1980, Thessaloniki) is a Greek curator, writer, theorist, educator[1] and former journalist based in Athens and Rotterdam. She is the founder and director of contemporary art institution State of Concept in Athens,[2][3][4] where she curated solo exhibitions of artists such as Laure Prouvost,[5] the research agency Forensic Architecture,[6] Croatian artist Sanja Iveković[7][8] and the film collective Rojava Film Commune.[9] The exhibition of the Rojava Film Commune Fokianaki curated, titled "Forms of Freedom", was recently featured in Art Forum magazine,[10] and has so far travelled to the following institutions: Galerija Nova, in Zagreb,[11] the exhibition space of e-flux publications in New York [12] and Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art of Slovenia, in Ljubljana.[13]

A retrospective of Fokianaki's institution titled State (in) Concepts was exhibited at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris in 2017.[14] Fokianaki was invited by artist Kader Attia to curate a group exhibition inspired by the program of State of Concept, at La Colonie (Art Space) in May 2018, titled "The Trials of Justice".[15][16] She has curated the solo exhibition of artist Kapwani Kiwanga at the Formerly Known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam,[17][18] which coincided with Kiwanga's award for the Marcel Duchamp Prize of the Centre Pompidou.[19][20][21]

Fokianaki's work explores the relation between art, formations of power and how they metamorphose under the influence of geopolitics, national identity and cultural and anthropological histories.[22][23] Her recent project "The Bureau of Care" received the Solidarity Grant of the European Cultural Foundation.[24]

Together with curator Antonia Alampi, she is the co-founder of Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture.[25] Future Climates was part of the "Substance 100", a new, annual list, that outlines a diverse array of artists, activists, collectives, movements and organizations making a substantial change in the world, launched by on-line museum and platform "Collecteurs".[26]

Fokianaki was curator and programmer at Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp from 2017-2019, where she curated two large-scale group exhibitions: the exhibitions Extra Citizen (2017)[27] and Extra States: Nations in Liquidation (2018).[28]

Fokianaki is a lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) of the ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands,[29] and was a guest lecturer at HISK in Ghent, Belgium.[30] She writes for various international art journals and publications, discussing issues ranging from art, politics, to ethics[31] such as a joint opinion piece on art, economy and documenta's arrival in Athens, written with former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis[32] and an opinion piece around the discussion of looted artefacts and specifically the Parthenon Marbles for frieze (magazine).[33]