Can you see me?

Since 2019, TAVROS has been instigating creative programmes and workshops guided by fieldwork and the unique characteristics and needs of local Tavros communities. 

Can you see me? is a weekly two-hour artistic workshop with/for women from the ‘Tavros Solidarity School’[1] focusing on the area’s past and present and its social, political and refugee dimensions. It stems from the need for women, mothers, workers, social volunteers who are -more often than not- underrepresented, to become more visible in the everyday social fabric and to have access to a much needed creative outlet. Through archival research by artist Eva Giannakopoulou, this series of group meetings, led by the latter, will explore and highlight the role women have played in the area of Tavros, while both individual and collective artworks referring to traditionally “female” crafts, such as sewing, embroidery and weaving, will be created.

Exploring further notions of care-giving and self-care, the workshop aims to highlight the role women workers from the neighbourhood have played in the past: their political activism during the National Resistance, their contribution to the city’s industrial development,  as well as their key role in the area’s social set up through ‘tactics of care’ and ‘genealogical’ and familial interconnections. 

Can you see me? functions as a historical and social mapping of female agency. The program aims to empower local participants through interaction with archival material from the area (carriers of civic and personal memories) as well as through awareness of contemporary tools of creative expression. The project, wanting to amplify the Solidarity School’s inclusive and intergenerational nature, will invite two members of the Berlin based female feminist collective Maternal Fantasies to lead a three-day workshop with the members of the Solidarity School. The collective consisting of seven international interdisciplinary artists, cultural producers (Aino El Solh, Hanne Klaas, Isabell Spengler, Lena Chen, Magdalena Kallenberger, Maicyra Leao, Mikala Hyldig Dal) and their children – who actively participate in the group’s events and performances.

Through artistic workshops and the coexistence of professional and amateur artists of all ages, Can you see me? attempts to use “female” methodologies of care bringing communities together to encourage knowledge exchange. As art theorist Else Krasny points out, ‘Thinking, like art-making or curating, does not happen in isolation, but rather in conversation.’ [2]  

[1] Tavros Solidarity School was launched in 2017, by local Tavros residents and is a member of the network of Social Solidarity and Collaborative Economy, which was formed 5 years prior with the aim of mutual support and  inclusiveness with the slogan “No one should stand alone in the face of the crisis”. It is self-managed, exclusively run by volunteers and operates with tandems and time exchanges, relying on the equal participation of all. Parents, students and teachers alike all take part in the assembly, instigating rewarding  actions to all. The Solidarity School of Tavros is housed in the Pontian Association on Chr. Smyrnis 24 street; its strategic planning meetings as well as discussion forums are open to all residents of Tavros.

[2] Archive, Care, and Conversation: Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in Feminist Curatorial Thought, p. 14. E. Krasny continues, quoting the entry from Josef M. Stowasser’s Latin-Germanic Dictionary, Lateinisch-deutsches Schulwörterbuch (Munich: Oldenbourg Schulbuch GmbH, 1994), how ‘.. The Latin root conversatio means contact, moral conduct and way of living. Conversation as a way to conduct one’s life is co-implied with others; it includes the turn to others.’