Onassis AiR Fall Open Days 2025

Following last season’s warm reception by the public, with over 1,300 visitors, the Open Days continue, offering time and space for deeper engagement with the Onassis AiR Fellows and their projects.

On Friday, November 7, and Saturday, November 8, the residency spaces behind the Onassis Stegi building in Neos Kosmos open their doors once again. Visitors are invited to meet the Fall Season Fellows as they share their work-in-progress and ongoing research. It’s a rare opportunity to connect with our creative community and take part in an open exchange of ideas.

The two-day event features live performances, screenings, sculptural and audiovisual installations, and sound works by Gouled Ahmed, Sophie Ataya, Stratos Bichakis, Tania Bizoumi, Efi Gousi, Natalia Manta, Alexandra Niaka, Eliana Otta, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Konstantinos Papanikolaou, Siemon Scamell-Katz, and Marina Xenofontos.

On Saturday afternoon, join a tour through our spaces, led by the artists, to hear directly from the Onassis AiR Fellows about their artistic research and projects in progress. On the same day the first iteration of this season's Electric Café by STEGI.RADIO will feature an atmospheric soundscape at the Onassis AiR Atrium.

Friday, November 7 (19:00–22:30) and Saturday, November 8 (17:00–22:30)
[presenting throughout the event]

Gouled Ahmed | Praise to the Godlands | Mixed-media installation

Sophie Ataya | WHO WE ARE | Audiovisual installation

Efi Gousi | Speak, Little Wings | Audiovisual installation

Natalia Manta | Healing Weapons | Prototype kinetic and sound installation

Alexandra Niaka | The river where you set your foot just now is gone | Immersive installation

Eliana Otta | Time Traveling Within Modernity’s Ruins | Installation of research material

Vasilis Papageorgiou | FOSSILS [Work in progress] | Sculptural installation

Siemon Scamell-Katz | I'm burnt | Painting

Marina Xenofontos | Twice Upon a While | Videogame prototype

Friday, November 7 | 19:00–22:30

19:30–20:00 | Eliana Otta | Time Traveling Within Modernity’s Ruins | Participatory Lecture

20:00–20:30 | Tania Bizoumi | Láfyra | Spoken-word Performance

20:45–21:05 | Konstantinos Papanikolaou | Behind the Movement: A Choreographer’s Perspective | Performance

21:30–22:30 | Stratos Bichakis | Chaos Gaia Eros | Audiovisual Performance

Saturday, November 8 | 17:00–22:30

17:30–18:30 | Open Days Artist-led tour

19:00–19:30 | Eliana Otta | Time Traveling Within Modernity’s Ruins | Participatory Lecture

19:45-20:30 | STEGI.RADIO | Electric Café | DJ set

20:00–20:30 | Tania Bizoumi | Láfyra | Spoken-word Performance

20:45–21:05 | Konstantinos Papanikolaou | Behind the Movement: A Choreographer’s Perspective | Performance

21:30–22:30 | Stratos Bichakis | Chaos Gaia Eros | Audiovisual Performance

Gouled Ahmed | Praise to the Godlands

A multimedia project that incorporates textile art, self-portrait photography, film, and poly-vocal sound art into its worldbuilding. The work is centrally focused on creating of a series of mixed-media tapestry works, primarily featuring the Macawis (sarong) textile. The project explores psycho-memorial and psycho-spatial terrains, elegiac forms of ritual making, mourning, and navigating geographies of loss.

Find out more about the research, here.

Sophie Ataya | WHO WE ARE [working title]

Sophie Ataya’s feature documentary WHO WE ARE [working title] will be presented as part of an immersive room installation that reflects on the film’s core topic: the silencing and erasure of the director’s Palestinian identity within her family’s narrative. Through the display of archival materials and a seven-minute video piece, the installation invites viewers to engage with the processes of memory, absence, and reclamation.

Find out more about the research, here.

Stratos Bichakis | Chaos Gaia Eros

An audiovisual performance in three parts with live electronics and Cretan bulgari playing, reimagining the atmosphere of long-duration poetry singing. The performance is an interplay of immersive sound and dynamic moving images, crafting a scene that is part synthetic, part organic, fragile, and intimate, inspired by cosmogonic myths, magic spells, and folk songs.

Find out more about the research, here.

Tania Bizoumi | Láfyra

A spoken-word performance exploring the afterlife of objects left behind from past relationships. An excerpt from a developing text-based work, “Láfyra,” explores the metaphysical residue carried by objects, weaving a narrative around the tensions of language to reflect on intimacy, obsession, and the emotional dissonance of our attempts to capture meaning; meaning that remains fluid, suspended in affective superposition.

Find out more about the research, here.

Efi Gousi | Speak, Little Wings

For her showcase at the Fall Open Days, Efi Gousi presents excerpts of a film trilogy in progress that focuses on the climate crisis, female identity, and the silent forms of resistance that emerge when everything seems to be lost. In “Tectonic Riders,” Gousi’s first art film, presented at Plásmata 3 in May 2025, the question was: “On what soil will we be buried if the dead begin to return?” The second part, “Speak, Little Wings,” for which research is currently underway as part of the Onassis AiR residency, poses a new and equally urgent question: “What do we save in a catastrophe?”

Find out more about the research, here.

Natalia Manta | Healing Weapons

Α sculptural research prototype that merges diverse materialities, mechanics, and sound. A kinetic system or hybrid anatomy—part motherboard, part heartbeat—rotates in circular motion. Composed of black clay like burning soil, metal, and red fabric, it mirrors patterns of collective trauma and obsession. Visitors respond to a shared questionnaire, tracing behaviors, memories, and inherited repetitions through reflection.

Find out more about the research, here.

Alexandra Niaka | The river where you set your foot just now is gone

An immersive, real-time generated installation, with its core rooted in the history of water, specifically a Thessalian folklore myth. The artwork invites viewers to experience how landscapes, stories, and technologies together shape the collective consciousness, carrying forward the voices of those who set their foot in the river before us to the uncertain terrain of the future.

Find out more about the research, here.

Eliana Otta | Time Traveling Within Modernity’s Ruins

A participatory lecture about what Athens and Lima may have in common, about the Eleonas’ market and its Peruvian twin, Tacora. An encounter about the strange sensation of witnessing history repeat itself, and about the objects, places, and people that capitalism deems useless. The launch of a zine, some photographs, drawings, and other traces of a work in progress.

Find out more about the research, here.

Vasilis Papageorgiou | FOSSILS [Work in progress]

Vasilis Papageorgiou investigates the geology of the Cyclades by molding a series of lithified sedimentary rocks. He sees this act as the first step in a broader project, in which he examines how the built environment, particularly in the context of tourism, shapes the natural landscape.
His presentation for the Fall Open Days includes a video documenting the molding process, along with the initial molds themselves.

Find out more about the research, here.

Konstantinos Papanikolaou | Behind the Movement: A Choreographer’s Perspective

The choreographer places his work in a similar lens to an audio commentary: a recorded track that accompanies a film, DVD, or Blu-ray, offering insights into the production process, artistic choices, and behind-the-scenes details from directors, actors, writers, or critics. These features deepen understanding and enhance the viewing experience by providing informative and entertaining perspectives.

Find out more about the research, here.

Siemon Scamell-Katz | I'm burnt

For his Open Days presentation Scamell-Katz will present a new group of paintings that follow on from his previous series “The vanishing sublime” (2021-22) and “Le fin d’altèrité” (2023) to portray, using both the wildfires surrounding Attica and the experience of chronic illness, a view of the sublimity of annihilation.

Find out more about the research, here.

Marina Xenofontos | Twice Upon a While

An ongoing videogame project that began in 2015 with the creation of its central character, “Twice Upon a While”—an ideologically befuddled girl, suspended between hesitation and failure. Her journey is marked by loops, false starts, and dead ends—each choice amplifying her disorientation and ambivalence. Initially scripted as a choose-your-own-adventure narrative, the project has since evolved into a third-person open-world RPG, blurring the boundaries between story, simulation, and existential puzzle.

Find out more about the research, here.

Electric Café is the meeting point for the creative scene of Athens, a hub for producers, artists, and communities. An invitation to gather under the same roof and be present with each other, open to fresh ideas and yet-to-be-unearthed tastes and sonic combinations. An opportunity to solidify communal bonds while being immersed in music.

For its first iteration of this season, Electric Café presents Yannis Iasonidis, head of the Athens-based DIY label Orila. Having appeared in Salon des Amateurs and Meakusma festival, his sets feature a penchant for found recordings, non-music jams, and painfully slow BPMs.

Saturday November 8, 19:45-20:30

The Open Days are a series of public events held throughout each residency season. Each event is carefully shaped around the practices of the residency artists that participate in it, focusing not on presenting a ‘final’ work, but on the creative process that leads to it.

Across the 2025–26 season, the Onassis AiR Open Days will unfold in three iterations: Fall, Spring, and Summer. Visitors are invited to engage with the work of the participating artists over two days of live events, screenings, performances, talks, multimedia installations, and sound-based works.