Deutsches Historisches Museum: Meet the Staff (Thessaloniki edition): Curator Alexios Papazacharias

31.01.2014

14:14

Meet the Staff (Thessaloniki edition): Curator Alexios Papazacharias

More often than not, when people become really enthusiastic about something and they make it their passion and pursue this passion professionally, they can remember one moment in which all of that became clear to them.

For Alexios this moment was when he encountered Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ on the cover of a book. He was twelve or thirteen at the moment and remembers that that was the moment in which he decided he wanted to be in the arts professionally. As a professional viewer. For him ‘it was a funny coincidence that Duchamp’s last work was Étant donnés: 1 la chute d'eau / 2 le gaz d'éclairage’ - a work on viewing and voyeurism.

: 'Fountain' by Marcel Duchamp (replica), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, photo: Kim Traynor - CC BY-SA 3.0

We were curious about his job and its most challenging aspects and his involvement with the upcoming exhibition and did a short interview with him:

A: My name is Alexios Papazacharias and I am a freelance curator. I collaborate regularly with the MMCA since 2007.

Q: What all do you have to oversee/do at your job?

A: I usually get involved in all the stages of the exhibition design and realization. From the first selection of the artworks to the final installation. I would say that my job is to have a general overview of the whole project.

Q: What is for you the most interesting or challenging aspect of working at MMCA/in your job?

A: Getting in touch with artists and artworks and establishing some kind of connection with them that allows you to work is the most hard, challenging, interesting, appealing and valuable thing in my job.

Q: Is there an artist or a piece of art that particularly inspires you? If so, who/which one and why?

A: I think Duchamp is a major inspiration. He managed to set "things" free. As a free person with a free will he was. And with a rather complicated way of thinking.

Q: Tell us about the exhibition project at MMCA: What are for you the most interesting aspects of the exhibition in Thessaloniki? How does the exhibition relate to Greece and its relation with Europe?

A: This historical period of more or less 60 years that is being presented in the Desire for Freedom exhibition is a very interesting period for Europe and Greece as well. Although it looks like a peaceful period after a period of devastating world wars it is true that Europe was in general turmoil. Greece too. In this very same years art was changing radically in the world, Europe, Greece. It was a period of people moving from center to center, from Athens to Paris, Berlin, Rome etc. and they were moving because they desired freedom. I think it will be really interesting to try to investigate art and history through artists moving from center to center beyond national borders or identities. After all most of the Greek artists of that period lived and worked outside Greece and they were participating in the artistic reality of the center they were residing.

Q: The title of the exhibition for the Berlin and Milan stations was The Desire for Freedom. How would you relate to that title on a personal level? When do you feel most free?

A: Creativity and creation is freedom. I feel the most free when I am most creative. And I am not free at all when I cannot create.

: Alexios at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki.

Alexios Papazacharias is the collaborating curator of ‘The Desire for Freedom. Art in Europe since 1945. Beyond Boundaries’ together with Maro Psyrra. Curated by: Denys Zacharopoulos, art historian and artistic director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art.(Interviews with Maro and Denys coming soon!)

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Facebook Event Opening of the Exhibition on Feb 8, 2014 at 1:30 p.m.