In a land of museums, cultural foundations and ancient ruins everywhere, Onassis Ready, which opened earlier this month with Juergen Teller’s show “you are invited,” wants to offer something different.
Housed in a former plastic bottle factory in an industrial suburb between Athens and the port city of Piraeus, Onassis Ready spans more than 40,000 square feet. It is the latest addition to the Onassis Foundation, a nonprofit founded by the late shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis that funds initiatives across Greek culture, education and health.
Ready has been set up for artists as a studio, show and performance space, and early next year will host “Ongoing,” the Tilda Swinton exhibition that’s currently on at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. It will also host Borderline, the foundation’s long-running festival dedicated to electronic music.
It is also meant to be a space for experimentation, where artists can explore XR and AI art, and work with colleagues from Onassis ONX, an accelerator for new media and digital artists, which is based between Athens and New York City.
“We actually call it a factory of dreams,” says Afroditi Panagiotakou, artistic director of the Onassis Foundation, in an interview. “If you give time — which is actually the most valuable thing in the world — space and money to artists, that is what I call a dream.”
The opening of Juergen Teller‘s show at Onassis Ready in Athens.
Margarita Nikitaki
She describes Onassis Ready as “a process-based building. Artists don’t have to rush their projects. They can take their time, take risks, work with other people who they haven’t met before — and ask for things that don’t make sense. We’re here as facilitators, as the glue, and we want the residents to become part of the city and to leave their footprint,” she says.
The Onassis Ready residents all have different backgrounds. “They are filmmakers, social scientists and poets. But we also have people doing artisanal and technical residencies — in lighting, for example. It means you can have an artisan or a designer who wants to make a piece of furniture, and they can work with somebody from ONX who knows how to create using VR or AI,” she says.
Panagiotakou describes the new space as different from a museum, and something entirely new for Athens. Onassis Ready, she says, is more about the “process than the product.” And like Teller’s show, future events will be site-specific, and focused on “adventures and experiences. It’s about going somewhere, to have a good time, and doing something that stimulates your mind and gives you pleasure at the same time.”
That’s why she chose Teller to stage the inaugural show.
“There is something raw, honest, twisted and surreal” about his work. “It’s very human. You see faces, you see people, you see personalities. What you don’t see is the epitome of objective beauty,” she says. She argues that Teller “brings out what makes people interesting. Maybe that’s why they all look so young.”
She says that with Teller, it’s all about the human story. “It’s never about the shoes, but the way the woman walks. And I think that’s so close to our own taste and aesthetic. We don’t do mainstream.”
A look at Juergen Teller’s show “you are invited” at Onassis Ready space in Athens.
Reviews of the show, and the space, have been positive. Lefimerida, a local news site with robust cultural coverage, said Teller has built his “own cathedral in an old plastics factory,” and described the show as a “confession with body, humor and vulnerability. The photographer who made fashion sweat reminds us that truth can be more sensual than perfection.”
Traveling to Onassis Ready is another part of the adventure as it’s off the usual Athens-Piraeus tourist track. The new space is located near the cities’ main fruit and vegetable wholesale market, and across from the training center for Olympiacos, the most popular soccer team in Greece.
It may seem remote to some, but Panagiotakou believes it’s a magical space. “Go up to the rooftop, and you think you can touch the Parthenon,” she says.
The team behind Onassis Ready, she adds, is ready to make magic to happen. “We want to get our hands dirty, jump into new experiences with the possibility of failing,” she says. “We don’t know whether we’re going to succeed — and that’s the best thing. It’s just the beginning of a new adventure for us.”
