A Shop Selling Animal Hides and Wildlife Taxidermy Is the Greek Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale

Artnet News March 24, 2015 ShareShare This Article

The Greek Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will present an installation by the artist Maria Papadimitriou that will recreate a shop for animal hides and leather from the central Greek city of Volos inside the neoclassical building.

Curated by Gabi Scardi and Alexios Papazacharias, the installation titled Why Look At Animals? AGRIMIKÁ suggests that humans’ anthropocentrism, which leads us define ourselves as “non-wild, and different from all other animals,” sparks a series of concerns ranging from politics and history to economics and traditions.

The AGRIMIKÁ are animals that coexist with humans but resist domestication. The artist explores our fascination with such animals, featured in cosmology and mythology: Rome owes its existence to a wolf; a she-goat nursed Zeus in his infancy.

“The agrimiká become the vehicle for a contemporary allegory of the dispossessed, and attempts to galvanize our instinctive resistance to the decadence that surrounds us,” the project’s statement reads.

Maria Papadimitriou is an award winning international artist based in Athens. She has previously represented Greece at the 25th Saõ Paulo Biennale.

For more on the upcoming 56th Venice Biennale see:

Venice Biennale Curator Okwui Enwezor On “All the World’s Futures,” Karl Marx, and The Havana Biennial Boycott

Ai Weiwei Project and Participants at the Iraqi Pavilion at Venice Biennale Announced

Ukrainian Pavilion at Venice Biennale Gets Backing from Billionaire Victor Pinchuk

Sheikha Hoor Brings 14 Artists to the UAE’s Venice Biennale Pavilion