ART FAIRS: What We Liked About Art Athina 2025

Oh, yes! It was a grand celebration. Thousands of people passed through the gates of the Zappeion Hall from September 18 to 22, 2025, to stroll, to admire, to reflect, to bypass, and to take photos at the 72 booths of this year’s Art Athina. On Friday and Saturday, the flow of people was calmer, so one could get a better overview of the stands, which was not so easy on Sunday. Of course, the joy of seeing so many people at the largest visual arts event in the country, in terms of size, outweighed the convenience.

By Mimika Christodoulopoulou
Photo: Mimika Christodoulopoulou Archive

The days were ample and the program of parallel events, both in the peristyle and the surrounding areas, was rich. Of course, the general public did not participate in all of them. The greatest participation was seen in the children’s educational program “Little Athens,” the performance by Katerina Zacharopoulou in collaboration with Crux Galerie, and of course, the closing of the parallel events on Sunday evening by members of the Greek National Opera’s Ballet under the direction of Konstantinos Rigos, a finale full of intensity, color, and rhythm.

Turning the spotlight on the art galleries, which after all were the main focus, we would say that very few were willing to showcase innovative artistic practices and ideas. This resulted in an apparent uniformity among the booths, depriving the fair of a sense of freshness and renewal—an element that even the parallel events from Flux Laboratory in the peristyle failed to provide.

 

Small or large booths had as a common element the pairing of artistic practices and artists, something that often did not yield the desired result. The works were, for the most part, small in scale, which is understandable given the ongoing economic crisis. However, at an art fair, one ought to present “bold” works, if nothing else. We encountered only a few large-scale works in the more well-known galleries, which also had the larger booths.

Among many admirable artworks, we found a “rest” while looking at the works of Dimitris Alithinos at the Sianti gallery. There, the rust on the metallic surfaces of his works acted as a palimpsest, on which we recognized symbols and traces of memory. Other works that stood out were Margarita Myrogianni’s at The Breeder Gallery, Alekos Kyrarinis’s diminutive work in the right-hand corner of Galerie Citronne, as well as the wonderful blues of Yiannis Adamakos. Also, the one-artist booth of Roma Gallery was exceptional, as it was one of the very few that showcased a single artist, Anastasis Ioannou, with his unique trees. The distinctive artistic practice of Kostas Emmanouilidis at the Batagianni gallery also stood out, along with the works of Dimitris Papastamou and Sissy Panagopoulou at the Mataroa gallery, as well as those of Michalis Parlamas and Spyros Verykios at the Ersi gallery. Furthermore, Dimitris Papadopoulos’s beautiful horse in the Mets Arts Center space as well as we must mention the collaborative project “espressobar,”. However, the title for the space that stole our hearts would go to a small booth: that of the Artshot gallery.

Concluding our brief stroll through this year’s Art Athina, we must mention once again that the important prize for the new artist for 2025 went to Myrto Xanthopoulou.

Off the Record

• We were a bit disappointed by the lack of a translation booth for the Talks held at Aegli. It reminded us a bit of “neo-colonial” practices.
• Among the highlights of the fair were the workshops that, for a second year, catered to children with learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental singularities, as well as the wonderful Citronne fans that cooled us down and added color to the corridors of the exhibition.

Photo: Myrto Xanthopoulou, Photo © & Courtesy Mimika Christodoulopoulou