ATHENS, GREECE.- In the framework of the events that will take place prior to the inauguration of the new building of the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Athens, the reconstruction of which is expected to be completed in 2008, a large scale international exhibition under the title The Grand Promenade was organized.
The idea of the exhibition was born from the close proximity of EMST to the archaeological sites and monuments of Athens that offers a possibility of various transcultural communication networks between antiquity and contemporary international art.
The title of the exhibition refers to the "Grand Promenade", a huge urban intervention around the Acropolis that creates an “open” museum, perhaps the largest one worldwide, unifying the rich cultural heritage with the capital’s daily life and multicultural reality.
As experience and metaphor the Grand Promenade allows unexpected encounters and ties, stories within History, new relationships between the local and the universal, and an open conceptual narrative incorporating the Elsewhere and the Others.
44 artists from around the world will be participating with recent works or in situ commissions of the Museum, which will be presented in outdoor archaeological spaces, monuments and adjacent public and private buildings. Among the participating artists are: Pawel Althamer, Ghada Amer, Andreas Angelidakis, Janine Antoni, Kutlug Ataman, Per Barclay, Vlassis Caniaris, Michael Blum, Christian Boltanski, Pavel Buchler, Fouad Elkoury, George Hadjimichalis, Gary Hill, Thomas Hirschhorn, Yu Hong, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Y.Z.Kami, Anish Kapoor, Gülsün Karamustafa, Toba Khedoori, Jannis Kounellis, Wolfgang Laib, Luisa Lambri, Miltos Manetas, Julie Mehretu, Ernesto Neto, Silke Otto-Knapp, Adrian Paci, Susan Philipsz, Dimitris Pikionis, Angelo Plessas, Khalil Rabah, Steve Roden, Ulrich Rückriem, Santiago Sierra, Nedko Solakov, Ηans Jurgen Syberberg, Lina Theodorou, Evanthia Tsantila, Kostis Velonis, Amelie von Wulffen, Rachel Whiteread, Zafos Xagoraris, Vana Xenou.
