About

After years of curating a constellation of projects in and around Athens, locus athens is exploring a new format: founding a home in the area of TAVROS. Our medium sized non-profit space, opening in October 2019, will be the springboard for our need to respond to the social and political circumstances around us, by exploring notions of democracy, equality and ecology whilst looking to address these issues head on through dialogue, listening and learning.

Inspired by our locality, which takes its name from a mountainous region in Turkey (Toros Dağları) from which a wave of migrants arrived and settled in the 1920’s, our program will reflect our belief in the transformative potential of shifting perspectives and moving minds and bodies through our relationship with art.

By using a variety of tools: exhibitions, research, commissions, educational programs, talks, screenings, development funds, and community work, TAVROS aims to be a welcoming, open and democratic space dedicated to embracing and enriching relationships between similarly-minded institutions, with artists of diverse backgrounds and with the local community and creating a space for unheard, threatened or marginalized voices.

Tavros: our
neighborhood

Tavros was first inhabited in the 1920s by refugees from Asia Minor, in an area which used to be an extensive olive grove and where many rivulets of the Kifissos flowed. Like all the refugee settlements at that time, they were positioned at a distance from the center of Athens. Often in the winter months the precarious settlements, at the time not much more than shanty towns, would be flooded by rain. Nearby food markets alongside the slaughterhouse led to the fast development of the area – the refugee population providing labor for the new surrounding industries.

As the city developed, the landscape changed, gone were the groves, whilst the rivulets were cemented. In the 1950s the Ministry of Welfare developed much needed social housing, still standing today and facing our space TAVROS. The inhabitants of Tavros were key to creating a working-class identity for the area, as a center of resistance in WWII, for ensuing class struggles and later for the headquarters of neo-Marxist groups. In recent years, new waves of migrants have inhabited the area, providing labor once again for Tavros’ small scale industries but also new stories of shifting identities. Tavros now, is a hybrid area where large-scale corporations, non-governmental and cultural organizations, universities and schools, small scale industries and the 1950’s refugee houses stand side by side. It is one of the few areas in the center of Athens where you can still find large green expanses that allow you to dream.

TAVROS is a project of locus athens.

For further information on previous projects – www.locusathens.com