Plásmata 3

The surreal isn’t just present in the artworks—it’s embedded in the very fabric of the park. A place that seems natural yet is constructed; a landscape that reveals itself as a jungle and hides like a collective sanctuary of our dreams—a constantly shifting scene.

Among the hybrid works—many of which are part of the Onassis Collection—are strange totems charged with hints of spiritualism, mythical creatures, ancient column-pillows you can lie on comfortably, monuments made from shattered Athenian pavement marble, bodies caught between falling and ascending a staircase to nowhere, glass flowers lit by the embrace of two people, Amazons on motorcycles, endlessly spinning seashells echoing dripping water, familiar yet uncanny beings emerging from flowerbeds. Plásmata 3 is an experience of fantasy and wandering.

Plásmata 3 doesn’t divide art into digital and analog. Instead, it emphasizes its natural evolution through time: from shadow puppetry to projection mapping, from painting to film, from video art to contemporary digital and post-digital expression.

Here, technology is not the goal—it’s a tool. The artists don’t serve artificial intelligence—they use it, transform it, subvert it, surpass it. With imagination as their primary weapon, they create new narratives that do not submit to algorithms but question them, reinvent them, and drive them mad.

Plásmata 3 is an invitation to play—a proposal to see the world around us differently. Like in the cinema of David Lynch, the uncanny emerges from the familiar, and the dreamlike feels like memory. What is the Ministry of Anarchaeology? Is that owl next to the statue of Athena really moving? Why are there sheep from Lebanon in the park? Could the spirit of the park bring us together? Are golden Datsuns falling from the sky? Do the seashells sing? Would you like to become a bat?

At Pedion tou Areos, you’ll encounter beings you’re not sure are real—or born from a fairytale, a Goya painting, or your childhood dreams.

This year’s Plásmata 3 are uncanny—but also lovable. Tender and familiar. They make you wonder: Do they exist? Did they exist? Will they? And maybe that doesn’t even matter. Come to Plásmata 3—let’s play without worrying about what’s normal and what’s not. You won’t need a ticket. Just your imagination.

Andreas Angelidakis, Ziad Antar, Yoann Bourgeois, The Callas, DIONYSIOS, John Fitzgerald, Pierre-Christophe Gam, Moritz Simon Geist, Efi Gousi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Botao ‘Amber’ Hu, Noemi Iglesias Barrios, Kalos&Klio, William Kentridge, Aias Kokkalis, Katerina Komianou, Jiabao Li, Matt McCorkle, Manousos Manousakis, Natalia Manta, Martyna Marciniak, Maria Mavropoulou, Janis Rafa, Andreas Wannerstedt, Robert Wilson.

Andreas Angelidakis, with his Anarchaeological Anaparastasis (2025), imagines columns you can rest next to them, in a clearing you’ve never noticed before, proposing an anti-hierarchical, queer archaeology. Andreas Wannerstedt, with Focus! (2024), humorously comments on our obsession with distinguishing the real from the false and the futility of resisting our desires, using a colorful bust of the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus as his starting point. Natalia Manta, with Mother (2023), unveils a sculpture of a mother goddess that might have just been unearthed in an excavation or dropped from a UFO—an archaeology of the future, ready to gestate and to pounce at once. Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, with Where Is My Mind? (2020), inspired by the late Greek poet George Seferis, whisper stories of centuries through an endless parade of headless and bodiless Hellenistic statues and digital fragments, staging a ritual of loss, memory, and freedom. Efi Gousi, with Tectonic Riders (2025), weaves a rite of rebirth in a post-apocalyptic landscape: young girls, like modern-day Amazons, with the machine as a fertilizing agent, revive the ancient bull-leaping ritual as carriers of life and flame. The Callas (Lakis & Aris Ionas), with their Punkthenon (2022), invite us to ironically enjoy the eternal Greek summer, lying on sunloungers atop a small hill, gazing at their surreal Parthenon—in a frozen explosion, made from the marble sidewalks of downtown Athens—as a punk archaeology of the present; while with Beware of the Dogs (2001), they trip away their human selves, mocking the inability of communication between humans and animals—and among humans themselves.

Aias Kokkalis, with Ares Awakening (2025), through a magical video of synthetic creatures abruptly interrupted by the awkward reality of news broadcasts, questions the limits of our tolerance for ‘otherness,’ whether it concerns the ‘lost’ creatures of Pedion tou Areos or the people and beings living among us. Moritz Simon Geist, with Hard Times—Soft Sounds (2021), traces a dreamlike path with his hacked seashells, echoing a world that is consciously slowing down. Jiabao Li, Matt McCorkle & Botao ‘Amber’ Hu, with EchoVision (2024), invite us to embrace darkness and become bats—calling, singing, or simply speaking—through an augmented reality app. Manousos Manousakis, with Neighbors (2025), makes us cherish creatures born from ink on paper that now live in the park, somewhere between the real and the imaginary. Robert Wilson, with Kool, Snowy Owl (Horizontal Blue) (2006), places an owl on a tree—one that does not distinguish between night and day—and invites us to observe closely the circle of life, symbolizing the recycling of time and our existence. Janis Rafa, with Love me. Lick me. Forgive me. (2023–2024), unravels dynamics of power and care, love and deception, through the eyes of an animal. Ziad Antar, with Tokyo Tonight (2004), stages a playful paradox where sheep and shepherds could, with equal ease, be in Tokyo or Pedion tou Areos, while with Metronome (2024), he measures the rhythm and cycle of life and loss.

DIONYSIOS, with his Meditation on Time (2022–2025), places a pickup truck with its typical flatbed in a flowerbed—so familiar yet so foreign in the park’s setting—creating a monument to the sacred and the profane, the everyday and the divine. John Fitzgerald & Godfrey Reggio make a stop in Athens right after their participation in the Cannes Immersive Competition, bringing The Vivid Unknown: CloudQatsi (2025), a video installation set in a peculiar cave, reflecting a planet in peril, the dominance of technology, and a life out of balance. William Kentridge, with his Shadow Procession (1999), conjures a different kind of shadow puppet theater, leading a parade of shadowy workers, kings, displaced people, and brass bands in a dreamlike procession that never really ends or arrives anywhere. Kalos&Klio, with The Keeper of the Garden (2025), embody the spirit of the park in a digital shaman-totem bearing symbols of unity and abundance, inviting us to plant seeds of peace and become guardians of the park’s diverse communities. Maria Mavropoulou, with The Sleight of the Machine (2025), introduces us to the world of a magician—not merely as spectators, but as accomplices in the deception we consciously and joyfully embrace. Martyna Marciniak, with her Anatomy of Non-Fact. Chapter 1: AI Hyperrealism (2024), presents us with a fake Pope in a Balenciaga puffer jacket, decoding image construction through artificial intelligence, and with it, our constant wavering between the real and the fabricated. Katerina Komianou, with her Heirlooms (2024–2025), explores the urban topography of Athens at dusk through Super 8 footage, drawing inspiration from the poetry of Katerina Gogou and focusing on places and figures just before they disappear or are already forgotten. Pierre-Christophe Gam, with The Sanctuary of Dreams (2025), constructs a temple of light and silence, where—guided by a performer—we are called to envision how we wish to eat, play, dream, pray, and love in an ideal future. The Yoann Bourgeois Art Company, with Approach 17. Opening (2023), stages an illusion: a white staircase leading nowhere, on which a man ascends—a tireless figure, endlessly striving to reach somewhere; a trace of a being that never ceased to climb, to persist, to hope, and yet it remains unclear whether he is rising or falling. Noemi Iglesias Barrios, with The Falling City (2025), wonders how much tenderness a city can withstand, composing a monument of love with glass sculptures that light up variedly, depending on whether visitors hold hands, hug, or kiss each other.

“A stroll through Pedion tou Areos park, this time with different Plásmata [creatures]. Quiet, discreet, enchanting, comforting. Natural, analog, digital. Creatures that play with the question of what is real and what is imaginary, what might actually happen and what could unfold only in dreams. A small square where we can listen to music while lying on the ground. Cinema, food, little things that make us feel good. We are searching for ways to enjoy the freedom of public space, to revel in encounters with strangers brought together by a chance walk or a mutual desire to discover Plásmata. Yes, we are in search of the sweet lie that beauty, surprise, humor, and—ultimately—art can tell. The park itself is but an illusion of nature crafted by design and human will. A familiar and tender experience this year. After all, we’ve met before, haven’t we? A small celebration and an ode to art, the right to idleness and rest, and the soothing power of simply being together.”

-Afroditi Panagiotakou, Artistic Director of the Onassis Foundation, Artistic Director/Curator Plásmata 3

“Plásmata is a living laboratory of ideas, experiments, and creations for the public space and for how we connect to it. Just as in real life, technology here is no separate realm; it dissolves into the everyday. That is why it disappears. In art, technology finds its roots in shadow theater, the media art of past decades, and even in ancient rituals of magic and religion. Plásmata 3 once again places the park at the heart of the city: this strange ‘in-between’ space shaped by our collective dreams and the material reality they forge. The magician of technology seeks our complicity in the illusion. Spirits and sprites of the park—sometimes taking animal forms—speak to us, protect us, embrace us. And an anarchaeology poses the question: who are we, really? The park, an artificial nature claimed with near-erotic fervor by all who are connected to it, resists the neat categories our desires try to impose. Through the flowerbeds we look at without really seeing, Plásmata 3 invites us to a celebration of the uncannily familiar: where the digital slips away through the cracks of the earth, the plants, the laughter of children, and the carefree steps of bodies wandering on a Sunday afternoon at Pedion tou Areos park.”

-Prodromos Tsiavos, Head of Digital and Innovation, Onassis Foundation, General Manager Plásmata 3

A part of the Plásmata 3 exhibition and its parallel program are carried out in the framework of the European programs TMLAB and European Digital Deal and the European Digital Innovation Hub Smart Attica (EDIH), which are co-funded by the European Union.