Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Rituals for a New Future by Maria Nikiforaki
Opening on Saturday, November 28th
Previous exhibitions
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Winter Nights brings together Norwegian, Greek and Icelandic artists in an exploration of seasonal rituals, animist worldviews and ecological memory. Curated by Eleni Riga, the international exhibition considers the meeting point between Nordic and Southern animisms, reflecting on climate change and ecological grief.
The exhibition was first presented at BO (The Association of Visual Artists Oslo) and at Femidomen in September–October 2025 with the support of Arts and Culture Norway and the Norwegian Embassy. It takes its title from Vetrnætr, the pre-Christian Nordic ritual marking the transition into winter. Traditionally held after the harvest, the gathering offered a final moment of communal exchange before the darkness and cold winter. It served both practical and spiritual purposes: strengthening social bonds and solidarity, while acknowledging relationships with the land, ancestors and other-than-human forces.
The exhibition was first presented at BO (The Association of Visual Artists Oslo) and at Femidomen in September–October 2025 with the support of Arts and Culture Norway and the Norwegian Embassy. It takes its title from Vetrnætr, the pre-Christian Nordic ritual marking the transition into winter. Traditionally held after the harvest, the gathering offered a final moment of communal exchange before the darkness and cold winter. It served both practical and spiritual purposes: strengthening social bonds and solidarity, while acknowledging relationships with the land, ancestors and other-than-human forces.
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Childhood often carries an illusion of invulnerability. Surrounded by caregivers, protected by the limited knowledge of what loss, pain, and mortality is, one experiences the world through a sense of relative permanence. Yet, adulthood announces itself through moments of rupture. The illness of a parent for example provokes the realization of bodily fragility and creates a sudden reversal of roles within a family: the receiver of care becomes the giver. And suddenly, the child of the family finds themselves caring for those who once cared for them.
At the same time, the numerous world crises they may experience from a young age condemn them to an early and hasty maturity, leaving them with the numb feeling of too many responsibilities too soon, and with childhood and adolescence years not lived as they were meant.
At the same time, the numerous world crises they may experience from a young age condemn them to an early and hasty maturity, leaving them with the numb feeling of too many responsibilities too soon, and with childhood and adolescence years not lived as they were meant.
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The Minimal Effort project began to take shape, both conceptually and aesthetically, in the summer of 2024, initiated by curator Elli Leventaki and visual artist Dimitris Kontodimos, with the aim of organizing a group exhibition centered on artworks-gestures as alternative methods of artistic production and expression. Starting from Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, but also taking into account more recent examples, such as Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, the exhibition draws on the logic of ready-mades and conceptual interventions, not as artworks that are “easy” to create, conceive, or select, but rather as pieces that can convey a wide range of meanings in a concise manner.
This endeavor aims to take a critical stance toward practices such as intensification, flexibilization, and overwork, which are often promoted as healthy in contemporary Western societies. By contrast, concepts such as “pause” or “standstill” tend to carry negative connotations or are even perceived as a kind of luxury today. This social condition significantly influences artistic production at all levels, because there is no art without so-called “laziness”, as creative people always need time to reflect, experiment, fail, and start over from the beginning…
This endeavor aims to take a critical stance toward practices such as intensification, flexibilization, and overwork, which are often promoted as healthy in contemporary Western societies. By contrast, concepts such as “pause” or “standstill” tend to carry negative connotations or are even perceived as a kind of luxury today. This social condition significantly influences artistic production at all levels, because there is no art without so-called “laziness”, as creative people always need time to reflect, experiment, fail, and start over from the beginning…