The Unseen Within the Gaze

Art Curator Paris Kapralos and 28 visual artists from Greece and abroad welcome you to the online edition of the exhibition “The Unseen of the Gaze”. The exhibition was presented physically in Athens at Chili Art Gallery (Dimofontos 13-15, Thissio, Athens), from Thursday, 1 October to Sunday, 11 October 2026, while this online edition will remain available until the end of November.

The visual artists who have contributed their works to the exhibition are: Joan Farrenkopf, Vania Syrmou, Nathalie Dubois Calero, Marita Tselekidi, Evi Baloo, Christos Malavetas, Alessandro Corbidge, Katerina Spyropoulou, Ne., Kiki Kiryttopoulou, Soula Ioannidou, Kleopatra Arapoglou, Angelos Nikolopoulos, Nefeli Gimouki, Anna Gouvianaki, Panagiota Kapogianni, Thanos Palaskos, Vivi Daskalopoulou, Maria Tassopoulou, Manolis Manarakis, Nikos Kalogeropoulos, Giorgos Mylonas, Kalliopi Gouletsou, Efi Manoledaki, Giorgos Barberis, Ifigeneia Machili, Stelios Pafitis.

A collaborative video art work by Gazmir Galanxhi, Irene Grammatikou, Gavrilos Chadzivasileiou, Nathalie Dubois Calero is also presented.

 

The exhibition “The Unseen of the Gaze” focuses on the invisible mechanisms that determine the way we see. Drawing on theoretical references from phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and image studies, it approaches the gaze as a dynamic process shaped by attention, memory, experience, social conventions, and technology. The unseen exists within the choices, expectations, and interpretations that organise our perception, as well as beyond the frame. It can be found in the details we overlook, in implied absences, in traces that bear witness to something that never appears, as well as in the algorithms that determine which images are displayed and which disappear from our field of vision. Within this context, photography is transformed from a medium of documentation into a means of investigating vision itself. Documentary, urban photography, street photography, conceptual and staged photography, digital interventions, and images created using artificial intelligence tools can serve as different approaches to the same question: how is what we consider visible constructed, and what remains outside it? The exhibition invites artists to freely explore the concept of the unseen through any photographic practice, addressing issues such as selective perception, what lies outside the frame, absence, memory, invisible social structures, the relationship between reality and representation, digital mediation, and the new forms of visibility emerging in the age of artificial intelligence.

ARTWORKS

A bilingual commemorative catalogue-book, in Greek and English, has been published for the exhibition and is available free of charge to all visitors.

View and/or download it, in Greek or English, HERE.

PostHuman Holobionts (PHH): The Wall

A collaborative video art project by multiple artists.

The Wall, video incorporating a wall from a psychiatric hospital and microbial cultures collected from the wall

Anthropopaint: A shared concern about water pollution explored by artists from different cultural backgrounds and artistic practices

Laments: Video incorporating microbial cultures collected from the air

Nathalie Dubois Calero
Visual artist and biologist (team leader)

Gavrilos Chadzivasileiou
Musician, based in Corfu, Greece (co-leader)

Irene Grammatikou
Dancer, based in Corfu, Greece

Gazmir Galanxhi
Painter, based in Albania

“Grounded in science, philosophical, contemplative, and deeply personal, Wall-Anthropocene-Laments encourages visitors to reconsider the gradual dissolution of boundaries between the human body, the environment, and the worlds of microbes and plastics, which are in constant motion and interaction. Everything we touch bears a microbial imprint, biological traces of interaction and exchange – a memory that operates beyond the realm of human consciousness. More than half of the cells in our bodies are microbes – our microbiota – which interact with every aspect of our lives. We are microbes immersed in an ocean of microbes. Yet the microbiota of people in the Western world is disappearing, leaving us alone for the first time in human history, with a new plastic component. Will we lose our millennia-old connection with the microbial world just as we are beginning to understand it? Will we become isolated, human-made plastic creatures, confined within our anthropocentric bubble? We have no answers. Only questions.“.

“Farrenkopf is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on global connection and deep engagement with the natural world. Working across performance, public installation, and community-based placemaking, she creates participatory experiences that invite audiences to reconsider memory, relationships, and shared environments. Her work fosters dialogue and cross-cultural exchange, emphasizing art’s capacity to cultivate empathy and collective awareness. As Founder and Director of ArtHouse Alliance, she develops platforms that bridge communities through creative collaboration and conversation. Visions examines the dynamic interplay between individual perspectives and collective conversations. It is a journey of sound, movement, color, and light. Blending images of Inspirare, an installation work of fabric in response to air and public space, and the voice of Howard Bad Hand, Sicangu Lakota leader and musician, it takes viewers through spaces of healing, culminating in ocean waves which symbolize peace and renewal.
“.

Joan Farrenkopf: Visions, Video, 4’.37’’, 2020

Joan Farrenkopf’s art-making involves global connection through deep engagement with the natural world. Her performances, public installations, placemaking, and community involvement invite audiences to consider the influence of memory. She is the founder and director of ArtHouse Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to bridging divides through art and promoting cross-cultural understanding. Farrenkopf’s exhibitions and practice has spanned the globe, including residencies and installations across Europe and North America. Current work “We Are All Related,” an interactive public sculpture installation at the Chinese National Convention Center in the Beijing Olympic Complex, demonstrates her commitment to global interconnectedness. This powerful sculptural experience invites viewers to consider the shared bonds that unite rather than separate. Farrenkopf uses art to transform, cultivate empathy, and strengthen our collective connection to nature.

Nathalie Dubois Calero: Unseen Skin, Video 9’, 2026

Nathalie Dubois Calero is a French and Canadian sound artist, video maker and scientist whose practice exists at the intersection of biology research, visual art, performative workshop, and experimental music. She often works under the identity BacterHuman, a name that reflects the central question behind her practice: where does the human end, and the microbial world begin? For her, microbes and especially skin microbiota, are therefore much more than scientific subjects. They are storytellers, unveiling past and present human and non-human life conditions, health, and even behaviour. Not slaves at humans’ service, but independent self-determining beings. Potential unseen rulers. She presented her videos and workshops in Greece, Slovenia, and Canada participating in panels and round tables about bioart.

“Microbes communicate and interact constantly, often beyond our awareness, while influencing processes within the human body in ways science continues to uncover. And I am asking a question which is, for me, very disturbing: How much of what we consider to be our deeper and most distinctive “us” – our personality- belongs to the human, and how much is shaped by the microbial worlds living within us? What does it mean to be human if half of our cells are not genetically human? And if, as shown in the video, our human personality itself is not exactly human? What are we? What are you? I have no answer.”.

“The starting point for the creation of my work entitled “Eternal Return” was a reflection less on human mortality and more on the perpetual transformation of matter. Everything decomposes. Everything returns in another form. There is an exquisite insignificance in every form of existence and an absolute significance in the elements of matter from which every form of existence is created.”.

Giorgos Barberis: “Eternal Return”

Giorgos Barberis was born in Aigaleo and lives in Nea Smyrni. He holds a degree in Chemistry from the School of Sciences of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is active in literature and the visual arts. He has published a novel entitled “Sensual Encounters” and a poetry collection entitled “Intravenous Routes”. He successfully completed the “Video Art” programme at the Centre of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His visual artworks have been presented in group exhibitions in Greece.

About the Curator, Paris Kapralos

Paris Kapralos is an Art Curator, Founder and Coordinator of the ARC – Art Revisited Collective, and Co-Publisher of Arts & Antiques CCR. Born in 1975, he was raised in Athens, where he lives and works. He studied Economics in Athens and Graphic Arts in Staffordshire, England. He worked as a journalist specialising in technology for financial newspapers, magazines, and online news agencies (1999-2006), then as an event management executive for business conferences in the Information Technology and Telecommunications sectors (2004-2011), before changing his professional direction and focusing on the field of art in 2011. He has curated and organised more than 200 exhibitions, visual arts initiatives, projects, and participations in Greece and abroad. More information is available on his website HERE.

About Chili Art Gallery

Chili Art Gallery was founded in 2010 and is located in Thissio, next to the Melina Cultural Centre of the Municipality of Athens, just a short walk from the vibrant Gazi district. It is a cultural venue where art enthusiasts and the general public can engage with all forms of contemporary art. Painting, sculpture, collage and mixed-media works, installations, printmaking, and photography are presented through monthly solo and group exhibitions, as well as a variety of artistic events. More information is available on the gallery’s website HERE.