LGBTQIA+

Onassis With Pride

Discover all the Onassis Stegi actions and initiatives for supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.

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We achieved much with love
February 15, 2024, made history as the day the rights of same-sex couples to marriage and parenthood were legally established. For the first time, the LGBTQI+ community is visible concerning marriage and stands fully equal in rights. Onassis Stegi celebrated this achievement with pride and as an active agent behind this shift, as it has openly spoken out since 2022 for the rights of same-sex families through the love and inclusion campaign “It's love that makes a family.”

The homophobic/transphobic assault in Thessaloniki, just a few days after the passing of the bill, shocked us and brought us face-to-face with the same fear. How far has Greek society progressed? Is the new bill enough to affect consciences? Reality has shown that we have to insist on what is profound. For a society that will turn into our grand family.

Through this year’s campaign of Onassis Stegi for the celebration of Athens Pride, with the voice of Maria Nafpliotou, we send a bold message of love and acceptance to Athens and the rest of the world. For each and every “open up,” we want to open an embrace, a discussion, a school door, or a job position. We want love to come out and flood the city and its people within a world where we feel safe to exist as we truly want.

Open the doors. Let love out.

I'm Positive: Without shame. Without stigma. Purely love.

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.

It all began in November 2018. We shared truths, overcame fears, and focused on the positive. In collaboration with the Greek Association of People Living with HIV – Positive Voice, Onassis Stegi organized a two-day event raising awareness and inspiring acceptance in the fight against HIV prejudice. In their own words, members of the HIV-positive community and their families spoke courageously and honestly about their experiences, and against stereotypes and outlooks rooted in fear. Members of the scientific community gave informative talks to children and teenagers on sexual health issues, the PrEP prevention method, and new pharmaceutical courses of treatment. Taking “Science has moved forward, it’s time society did too” as its rallying cry, the aim of the event was to accelerate the breakdown of stigma, and to help pave the way towards a better society for all. And we keep going.

Without shame. Without stigma. Purely love

This year, I’m Positive returned to Stegi’s Main Stage with an anniversary evening that encapsulated human stories heard loudly, personal narratives that inspired and became examples against stigma and prejudice. Because positive voices sounded louder. 40 years after the first victim of HIV in Greece, we gathered again to unite our voices for what must not be forgotten in order not to be repeated, for what unites people, for what makes us feel and be safe, for all those things that allowed us to experience love, but also for what made us accept ourselves first, and then empowered us to claim visibility and inclusion for all.

In collaboration with the Greek Association of People Living with HIV — Positive Voice, on Wednesday, November 29, we opened a platform to people and stories that needed to be heard, so that no one suffered from taboos, ignorance, and inequalities. Science had moved on. Let society follow.

Together, on the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi, counting more than 30 real-life stories of people who shared moments of their lives, we met again as a family that grew every year, with one promise: to keep talking openly again and again, until the obvious became a reality for everyone. The conversation was moderated by Lydia Papaioannou and Katherine Reilly.

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We’ll be saying it over and over again. Until it's our reality.

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.

Photo: Mike Tsolis

The Queer Archive Festival

3 - 6 June 2021, Athens

After last year’s great success, The Queer Archive Festival is back again in June 2021, hosting a great celebration of Athens’ rich and vibrant queer culture, with the support of Onassis Stegi for a second consecutive year.

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.

From Wolfgang Tillmans to Vassilis Kekatos, from Tamir David to Dynno Dada, from Xristina Trixa to Andy James, from a tribute to the avant-pop musician Sophie to discussions on the Greek queer art scene, Athens will resonate with artists from Greece and the world. For 4 days, The Queer Archive Festival will present video installations, exhibitions, walks, discussions, experimental artworks and performances that touch upon queered or queer-responsive approaches to human experience. The second edition of “The Queer Archive Festival” will take place in a variety of traditional and alternative spaces within Athens, from the National Garden and Pedion Areos Park to galleries and cinemas.

Image from the Queer Archive Festival 2

Athens Home For All
Athens is being filled with the colors that make people human. A city of inclusivity, visibility, and acceptance. Democracy, as a political system and as a way of life, was created here, in this city where each and every person – no matter their color, creed, nationality, age, sexual orientation, weight, or political beliefs – live together, coexisting with everyone else. Onassis Stegi is joining forces with the City of Athens, Google, Technopolis, and Athens Pride to spread an important message. It is the message of a city that embraces everyone, creating the conditions we all need to feel safe and free to be ourselves."Athens Home For All" is set to travel the world thanks to a very short film shot in Athens’ neighborhoods. People with real-life stories are brought together on the streets of Athens for a few seconds – as long as the film lasts – to show us that racism, violence, and social exclusion have no place here anymore.

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A flag for all
As part of the “Athens Home For All” campaign, Onassis Stegi is inviting political organizations and public institutions to raise the rainbow flag high over their buildings. A flag that weighs just 63 grams and yet proves too heavy for some to raise alone. This flag is also being made into a sticker that will transform shopfronts across Athens. The crosswalks around Onassis Stegi will be changing too, as will the building’s lighting, to send out a powerful message of inclusion. The city of Athens is being filled with the colors that make people human. And this is just the beginning.

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Onassis Stegi is queer

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.

Photo: Sylvia Kouveli

Onassis Stegi goes to Pride
Onassis Stegi supports the LGBTQIΑ+ community though action and initiatives undertaken both in Athens and around the world. In 2015, we came out in support of Athens Pride for the first time. Since then we’ve been #parousa (present in the feminine) each year, happy to see the numbers of people taking part grow and grow – last year, there were over 80,000 of us there. Together, many voices are louder to be heard.

Photo: Vasilis Bibas

Ask Afroditi

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.

Justice for Zak / Zackie Oh

“And now, we must be brave”

– TEAQUE OWEN

On Friday, September 21, 2018, a young LBGTQI+ activist – Zak Kostopoulos (Zackie Oh) – was beaten to death in broad daylight on a busy pedestrianized street in central Athens. Police investigations were unable to uncover the truth about what happened, and the case remains unsolved. A few days after Zak’s murder, Onassis Stegi took a stand and released an official statement calling for justice, freedom and democracy.

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.

Zak/Zackie on Onassis Stegi front, in view of the trial for his murder (November 2020)

Faster than Light

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.

Film still "Faster than Light" (2019)

Outview Film Festival
A chance to see queer films, to hear real-world stories, to live life a little through the experiences of others. Cinema is personal. It’s also political. We support Athens’ international LGBTQI+ film festival – the Outview Film Festival – each year. With its screenings of fiction and documentary films, international guests, masterclasses, and exhibitions, the festival sparks debate on such issues as diversity, transphobia, domestic violence, and misogyny with its every annual edition.

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