South by Southeast: Re-Orienting the Collection

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) presents South by Southeast, a monumental reorientation of the museum's permanent collection curated by Artistic Director Katerina Gregos. Borrowing its title with a playful nod to Hitchcock's North by Northwest, the exhibition signals a bold institutional pivot away from the long-standing dominance of Western European and Anglo-Saxon artistic canons. Bringing together works by 50 artists from over 20 countries, the display firmly repositions Greece at the heart of a vibrant cultural geography bridging the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Rather than framing modern Greece strictly through a Western European lens or purely through classical antiquity, South by Southeast embraces the nation’s complex, layered identity as a historical crossroads of empires, trade routes, and migrations. The featured artworks delve into themes of shared memory, displacement, postcolonial reality, and regional dialogue, weaving together political history with deeply personal narratives. Key works by renowned international and Greek artists, including Mona Hatoum, Jannis Kounellis, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Chryssa, and Lynda Benglis, uncover hidden cultural entanglements across the Levant and Southeastern Europe.

This transformative show aims to reframe how visitors understand Greece's place in the global artistic landscape, offering a compelling counter-narrative to conventional museum displays. It provides a rare opportunity to engage with contemporary art that directly reflects the living socio-political dynamics of the Eastern Mediterranean today. Located on the second floor of the museum, it makes for an essential cultural highlight when exploring our guide to Koukaki.