The Onassis Foundation inaugurates the Onassis AiR, an (inter)national artistic research and residency programme for all international artists with curious minds, and invites them to submit their applications due 26th of November.

What if, artists, curators and other creators, could take their time to reconsider their practice without the constraints of the production frenzy?

Τhe Onassis AiR (Artists-in-Residence) is a year-round artistic research and residency programme born in 2019, which offers time. Time to learn, to change, or go deeper by doing and undoing or non-doing. Without striving for the production of a final outcome/ creation, but rather focusing on the creative process itself.

During your time through the programme and located in the urban centre of Athens, all participants can interact with each other as peers. Regardless of age or how accomplished they are. With a mission to support the artistic process, towards a less product-obsessed arts ecosystem, artists meet as part of a community who works, thinks, and eats together, without striving for the next project, the next premiere, the next opening. A community that has the ability to pause, to rethink how each one of us functions and creates.

Onassis AiR will support: Greek and international artists, curators, and thinkers working in time-based artistic disciplines, who wish to deepen, reconsider, or transform their practice or methodology, without the expectations and constraints of a production.

Onassis AiR has been designed and will be run by Ash Bulayev (director of Onassis AiR) and Nefeli Myrodia (creative producer & dramaturg of Onassis AiR).

Open Calls and application forms:
For Onassis AiR
For Onassis AiR in collaboration with the Athens School of Fine Arts

For any questions regarding your application, please email: air@onassis.org


Read more about each programme strand:

Onassis AiR Critical Practices Programme is a full-time, 3-month encounter of 5 practitioners living and working in Greece. The programme is designed as a collective artistic research community of time-based professionals (visual artists, choreographers, theatre and film directors, composers, performers, curators, producers, designers, writers, cultural theorists, and other curious minds).

Onassis AiR (inter)national Curator & Artist-in-Residence Programme is a one-month, individual artistic research residency for international and Greek artists, living in Greece or abroad. This strand is for any artist or curator or other creative and curious practitioner (time-based practice) who has a concrete artistic research question or project they would like to take further. Regardless of experience level, but assuming that each participant has an existing individual practice at the time of the application.

Onassis AiR Exchange Residencies are individual artistic research residencies, varying in duration and scope, taking place at one of our collaborating institutions, outside of Greece. Exchange Residencies are intended for artists living and working in Greece within time-based practices: artists, makers, designers, theorists, curators, and other curious minds who would benefit from participating in one of the collaborating programmes around the world.

Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowships are the most reactive and tailor-made strand of Onassis AiR programme. Emergency Fellowships are intended for international and local artists, curators, and other practitioners. Emergency Fellowships are meant to be a stimulus to artists and curators who have a unique, unanticipated, and very time-sensitive need.

Onassis AiR DNA:

Time-based
This programme is for artists and curators who work with time-based mediums.
In-flux
This programme is for artists and curators with an existing professional practice, who are going through a shift, who are in-flux, and those who look to redefine how they work or create.
Local
This programme is very much rooted in the city of Athens and all the contradictions, beauty, tempo and light that it offers.
(Inter)national
This programme is for artists and curators who live in Greece & international artists, regardless of their nationality.
DIWO
This programme prefers to avoid the ethos of DIY (do-it-yourself) and instead embraces the logic of DIWO (do-it-with-others). All participants must have an interest of working and thinking and being with others (peers), and are willing to connect and engage socially within the diverse communities of Athens.
Self-learning
This programme is not educational, but is based on the principles of self-learning and learning-by-doing.
No gurus
This programme will not have teachers or master-classes or students - instead it is based on peers who all have their individual craft and methodologies and questions, and who share such concerns and questions with each other without unnecessary hierarchies inherent in the notion of “master artists”.
Welcome back
This programme, and its different strands, is meant to be a place you can return to. If you have been part of one of the strands of ONASSIS AiR, you are always welcome to apply again for another strand, or simply come and talk to us about your needs. And as a past participant, you are always welcome to drop by for lunch, or to borrow equipment and use the spaces (if what you need is available during that moment), or ask for advice, or use the library.

Click here to read more about the programme of Onassis AiR.