Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou
Photo: Pavlos Fysakis
Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou is the director of Victoria Square Project and the curator of its long-term research program “Who is the Contemporary Athenian?”. She currently is a fellow of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative at Columbia University. Niovi is the co-founder of MΕΣΑ Museum of People’s Free Thinking, a contemporary art outreach project for prisoners in Greece. Before joining Victoria Square Project, she worked as Director of Art in Public Space at Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture and contributed in documenta 14 as Community Liaison in Athens. With an academic background in architecture and cultural management (MA), her research interests focus on socially and politically engaged art projects and the public space as a constellation of political and social transformations. Her work experience involves working with a wide range of institutions, projects, and artists, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, IT), T.A.M.A. and Souzy Tros (Athens, GR), the Museum of Cycladic Art (Athens, GR), Viafarini DOCVA (Milan, IT), and Venice Biennial (Venice, IT), among others.
Victoria Square Project (VSP) is an evolving social sculpture. It was created by the artists Rick Lowe and Maria Papadimitriou in the framework of documenta 14 in Athens, in 2017.Victoria Square Project is a contemporary artwork and at the same time a physical space of reference for the neighborhood, acquiring its meaning and value in the context of urban development and neighborhood planning around its particular urban area.
Under the curatorial research question "Who is the contemporary Athenian?”, it attempts to identify concretely the elements that define an inclusive Athenian society today beyond labels like “immigrant,” refugee, first or second generation, Greek etc., but under the common ground of the neighbors and co-citizens. Our aim is to have a concrete contribution in identifying this collective identity and putting in the public sphere more actively the questions of belonging, democracy, the crisis, fascism, while empowering our community with a special focus on the youth. We seek to be a social meeting point in which intercultural relations are developed, a creative platform that will enhance cultural exchanges and strengthen the region’s community.
