Argo Arts is an arts organization based in Athens, Greece.
the Argo Annex
An artist-run project space in the heart of Exarcheia, Athens, featuring new site-specific performances, installations, and exhibitions, focusing on new and experimental work by contemporary emerging artists from Greece and abroad.
We host rotating guest artists from around the world who offer presentations of new work in dialogue with the local Athens art scene. In the Annex we also present workshops, lectures, film screenings, and poetry readings. The Argo Annex is a laboratory of creative expression!
You can find an archive of Argo Annex events here.
Matt and Sara
We are a two-souled being from California and Dorset, fond of jokes about bobcats, anthropology, and Virginia Woolf. We’ve lived and laughed and loved in London, LA, New York, Lisbon, and Athens (twice). Sara is an artist/ writer/ performer, Matt is an anthropologist/ writer/ photographer.
We’ve always wanted to run an art space and school, and now that it’s happened we can’t quite believe it.
Why Argo?
In Greek mythology, the Argo was the name given to a ship that embarked on a grand journey: it bore Jason and his band of Argonauts towards distant shores in their quest to find the magical Golden Fleece. Along the way, they encountered setbacks. Parts of the ship broke; they mended it. New additions were added, other things were taken away. By the end of the journey, the Argo was an entirely new ship in all but name. But that was the important part: the name remained, giving form to the essence of the thing. Through all of its various iterations and changes, the spirit of the Argo prevailed, coloring each new physical alteration.
In Maggie Nelson’s book The Argonauts, the Argo ship and its changing form serves as a potent symbol for the way relationships change over time. For theorist Roland Barthes, the Argo serves as a symbol of the language of love, citing that “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.”
For us, Argo Arts is a work of love. Each different iteration of this multifaceted project comes from a place of love and of passion, and a desire to share with community. We invite guests artists to stay in the Argo Annex, because we love their work and want to share it with the Athens cultural community. We offer residencies in Exarchia because we love this neighborhood, and want to share its slippery brilliance with the artists, writers, and performers who come here. We host the Argo Summer School because we believe in the radical possibilities of arts education that is driven by passion and real world experience, and we want to invite students to delve into theory, history, and creative experimentation with us.
Each exhibition and each offering presents a completely different form, a new metaphorical ship. But each contains the same name- and courses with the prevailing spirit of this big, evolving, community-centered project.
