ARC – Art Revisited Collective: Transitions & Passages

International Open Call for Participation in the Annual Exhibition titled “Transitions and Passages” by the collective of visual artists ARC – Art Revisited Collective.

The collective’s annual exhibition will take place at the Luminous Eye Art Gallery (Museum of Acropolis area, Athens city center) in February 2024. Alongside the physical exhibition in Athens, the exhibition will also be accessible online with the support of ARTgrID. The curation is led by the art curator Paris Kapralos.

Official Languages of the exhibition are Greek and English, and all materials to be produced will be bilingual, including the Exhibition Catalog and the parallel online exhibition.

Accepted Artworks. The exhibition welcomes original artworks of any style and artistic processing that engage with the theme in any way the artist deems suitable. Accepted art forms include painting, printmaking, photography, digital art, collage, mosaics, sculptures, and more.

Conceptual Framework. In our era, profound changes impact our lives, resulting in transitions and passages into new realities. The comforting illusion of a given normalcy recedes, and traditional identities are constantly under review. We are called upon to redefine our role in an apparently unfamiliar environment. Globalization and geopolitical shifts lead to massive population movements, resulting in the intermingling of cultures. In the field of technology, advancements reshape the world faster than our perception allows us to comprehend. Genetic science offers new means of reproduction, freeing us from biological parental roles. Vulnerable social groups from the past turn to political correctness and activism, which seems to critique the present more than guaranteeing a better future. The development of technology and artificial intelligence presents new opportunities but also dangers as they become integrated into our lives. In his essay “The Uncanny,” Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century (“Das Unheimliche” in the original, available in Greece through “Oxy” publications) refers to the uncanny as a feeling of estrangement caused when something familiar, intimate, or everyday takes on an unsettling, eerie, or threatening dimension due to being ignored or forgotten for an extended period. The sense of the uncanny arises when we encounter something that disrupts our common expectations of how the world operates. We find ourselves facing a non-linear evolutionary path, an era of deconstruction, confusion, and materialistic devotion, prompting us to reflect on our culture and seek reconnections that will lead us to a better future. Perhaps we must consider that all of this is uniquely human, it is our idol, and our echoes to which only we must provide the answer.