LGBTQIA+

There is nothing more powerful than a father or mother’s embrace, the smile of a proud child, or the unconditional, unlimited understanding and love of a partner. The notion of acceptance takes center stage in I am Positive thanks to the real-life stories of people living with and without HIV.

In 2022, we sent out a message fighting for the rights of same-sex families in Greece. This campaign was embraced by many people, of all ages, but it also drew negative comments. “Where’s the mom?” “Go find a mom then.” “It’s family that makes a family – what you’re peddling here isn’t family.” “Family means DAD MOM KIDS. Anything else is just PERVERSE.” This is just a taste of the hate directed at the campaign, and it shows why we must keep fighting for all that is glaringly obvious but not yet a given.

One year on, Onassis Stegi is again joining forces with Rainbow Families Greece and Google to help make family ties legally binding. Launched in 2022, this campaign championing love and acceptance is being brought back, word for word – and not a word of it will change until society as a whole is changed. However many times it takes, until the message is broadly embraced. Love, in and of itself, has the power to shake things up and make people reconsider, to overcome obstacles and bring about change. Because it’s love that makes a family.

3 - 6 June 2021, Athens

Designed to celebrate the very best of queer arts and culture, The Queer Archive Festival raises the curtain on another rich program of dazzling and provocative multimedia experiences from 3-6 June 2021. Open and accessible to all, our second festival edition remains focused on highlighting talent, encouraging creativity, promoting engaging and progressive contemporary art, which reflects modern queer culture, and ultimately creating a bustling hub that praises diversity and supports social inclusivity.

Through Onassis Stegi’s performance program, artists from every corner of the globe are given the opportunity to create, to express themselves, and to talk about the manifest rights of the LGBTQI+ community. At the Body Politics Festival (2018), six dancers used their bodies as research terrains, but also as tools for staking a claim to their rights in the world of today. In “Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/” (2016), presented as part of the Made In USA Festival, a mid-life crisis was choreographed with humor to stand in opposition to stereotypes demanding eternal beauty and bodies that never grow old. With their queer dance-theater work “John”, the singular DV8 company ploughed through taboos to speak candidly about the mistakes made by contemporary society. The “Body and Gender” discussion series (2016) explored the roles our bodies play in our daily lives, beyond closed-off categorizations and standard gender correlations. Each year, Onassis Stegi presents performances and arts experiences that question stereotypes and seek out new limits. Culture is not only the arts – it is also the point where political struggles find free expression.

For Athens Pride 2018, the Onassis Foundation’s Director of Culture Afroditi Panagiotakou had a wide-ranging conversation with two teenagers about basic human rights. And the young duo were not afraid to ask “challenging” questions on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in a frank discussion about the importance of being yourself.

“And now, we must be brave”

– TEAQUE OWEN

In April 2019, as part of the “For Ever More Images” exhibition hosted in Onassis Stegi’s basement hall, the Forensic Architecture research agency presented new evidence connected to Zak’s murder. An open call for new information and video documentation to help Forensic Architecture’s ongoing investigation was also communicated via the Onassis Foundation’s social media channels.

All we need is love. And some glitter.

Summer 2018 saw the work-in-progress presentation of “Faster Than Light” by Kentaro Kumanomido and Teaque Owen– a transmedia activism project created in collaboration with members of Athens’ LGBTQI+ community, Zak Kostopoulos among them. Its creators continued to develop the work, leading them to make a feature film bridging multi-branching pathways of justice and sorrow linked to the brutal loss of Zak, and to a live performance with artists drawn from the local drag scene that spotlights the power of Athens’ queer community. “Faster Than Light”, in its finalized form premiered on the Onassis Stegi Upper Stage on May 31, 2019.