ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2018-19
ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2018-19
Athena Hadji is an academic (B.A., University of Athens, M.A. and Ph.D., UC Berkeley), contemporary art curator and a published and award-nominated author. She has taught Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Art in Greece and beyond for over a decade. Currently, she is working toward a contemporary art group show that will air in the Fall 2018. As an academic, she is the recipient of prestigious fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation and the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, among others. As a curator she was selected for the NEON/ Whitechapel Gallery Curator Exchange Program, also her Summer 2017 contemporary art show was granted a NEON exhibition fund. As an author she has been shortlisted for two national awards and was granted a literary award from the Municipality of Rhodes for her latest novel The Sea Fled. She has collaborated with many cultural institutions and organizations. She has accepted invitations to lecture at selected institutions internationally. Dr. Hadji publishes extensively on art, archaeology, anthropology and beyond. She is co-editor of Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory (Routledge, 2013). Her most recent interdisciplinary contribution, linking Early Cycladic Art and the neurosciences appeared at Quaternary International in 2016. Her fiction works include three published novels, short stories and literary criticism articles.
The proposed project is a thorough critical presentation and in-depth analysis of the contemporary street art scene in Athens, Greece, combining the methodology and insights of art history and (urban) anthropology. Politics plays a crucial part in the bloom of an otherwise underground endeavor that has, however, come into the mainstream as of late. My interest in the project sprang from a long-term theoretical involvement in the everyday – mundane – practices, whether in prehistory (as part of my archaeological research agenda) or contemporary life and culture (as part of my anthropology teaching and research). The current situation in Greece, especially Athens, amidst a financial crisis that spread across the south of Europe (from Spain to Cyprus), but struck Greece especially hard in the past decade or so, is ripe for a comprehensive and balanced anthropological inquiry into the politics of the present – as well as past political stances, not solely official politics, but also, mostly, the political (under)currents that mandate the average citizen’s stance and attitude. Nowadays, more than ever, the necessity for a reconsideration of our relationship with the city emerges in its urgency. Athenian graffiti and street art until recently lugged behind developments in the international metropolises (Berlin, New York, London). However, during the past few years, the so-called “crisis years”, admittedly a time of widespread degradation, abandonment and desertification of the city, street art has emerged as a fertile power of expression with political, social, and romantic axes. Graffiti artists and writers, as active members and agents of the urban space, echo the heartbeat of a city that insists on living and holds on to its right to live in ways sometimes spasmodic, but always deeply human.
If you would like to contact any of our Fellows to discuss their ISRF-funded work, please contact Dr Lars Cornelissen (Academic Editor) in the first instance, at lars.cornelissen@isrf.org.