VIGIL

VIGIL is an artistic duo based in Athens, comprising Despina Sanida Crezia and Fotini Stamatelopoulou. Having a background in humanities (Despina in history/archaeology and Fotini in psychology/performance psychology), combined with a yearning to explore movement research and performance, the work collaboratively around notions of labor and effort through the body. Effort within the performative process is used as a tool to help uncover what lies underneath and expose the intimate personal elements, mental and physical, of each performer. These elements are often explored by VIGIL in site-specific contexts, engaging with the uncanniness residing between the natural and the urban. Their performance is the output of this process of becoming and sharing, unfolding through a gradual and non-forced awareness of time, space, and human and non-human interrelatedness. The body is used as a living archive of memories, stimuli, and emotions in space, revealing new perceptions of body image in personal and public spaces.

VIGIL started collaborating in 2021. They were selected to participate as artists in “Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition”, a project co-funded by Creative Europe (June 2022). In September 2022, they were invited by the multidisciplinary artistic duo VASKOS and curator Kika Kyriakakou to present “Guards” as part of the parallel performance program of the exhibition “Sheltered Gardens” by Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative (PCAI). Their work “[a] border of dying” was hosted in the residency of Flux Laboratory, Athens-Geneva (2022-2023) combining visual arts with performative practices.

VIGIL (Despina Sanida Crezia & Fotini Stamatelopoulou) are participants of the Onassis AiR Extended Research Residencies program for 2024/25.