In collaboration with the MOMus-Museum of Photography of Thessaloniki, we invite you to join us at the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023 taking place from 10 October 2023 to 11 February 2024.
More than 100 photographers from 18 countries are taking part in the PhotoBiennale and will present their work in a multi-thematic programme of 25 exhibitions, speaking events, open public events and educational programmes, which will be hosted in 19 museums, cultural spaces and art galleries in Thessaloniki and Athens for four months.
View the full programme on the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023 website.
Exhibition: The Spectre of the People
As part of the Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023 programme, we are delighted to welcome art historian and photography theorist Julian Stallabrass, who has curated this year’s main exhibition entitled The Spectre of the People, exploring the many different facets of populism through photography and video.
As the spectre of populism stalks the earth, artists have grappled with the phenomenon’s myriad dimensions including how and if to represent ‘the people’ (should they be thought to exist), democratic power, the nature of charismatic leaders, popular protest and insurgency. The lens as a medium – tightly woven with the history of mass politics since its inception – has been a natural field for artistic exploration and has taken many different forms: documentary, performative, satirical, conceptual.
Like the phenomenon of populism itself – born out of a profound political crisis – the exhibition also has an international character, presenting works by artists from countries such as Brazil, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, the Philippines, Poland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.
| When | 20 October 2023–11 February 2024 |
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About Julian Stallabrass
Julian Stallabrass is a writer, photographer, curator and lecturer. His books include Killing for Show: Photography, War and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq (2020), Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (updated edition, 2020), Internet Art: The Online Clash Between Culture and Commerce (2003), Paris Pictured (2002) and High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s (1999).
He curated Art and Money Online for Tate Britain in 2001, Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images for the 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial, and Failing Leviathan: Magnum Photographers and Civil War at the National Civil War Centre, Newark in 2015. He has made online TV programmes about aspects of modern and contemporary art for Tariq Ali TV in the series Rear Window.
The Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale is supported by the Ministry of Culture.
Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023 general co-ordination: Iro Katsaridou, Hercules Papaioannou