Marina Fokidis

Marina Fokidis, is a curator, writer, lecturer and institution-maker based in Athens Greece. Her methodology of challenging the prevalent monetary economy with a love economy harnesses the power of trans-cultural friendships while emphasizing site-sensitivity and sharing. In 2010, amidst the Greek economic crisis, she founded the independent space Kunsthalle Athena to reflect on the “social role of art institutions in the 21st century,” beyond mounting exhibitions and towards co-producing culture; while in 2012, she founded South as a State of Mind magazine, a biannual arts and culture journal that creates unexpected dialogues between distinct neighborhoods, cities, regions and approaches. In 2014, she was invited to become part of the core team for documenta 14 by artistic director Adam Szymczyk.  In 2023 she was appointed as curator of the main thematic section in Arco 2023, Madrid, where she conceived and curated the exhibition The Mediterranean a Round Sea

She is since 2021 curator of the public program for Salzburg International Summer Academy for Fine Arts, where she also teached , while in 2020 she was the curator for Vanderbilt University’s EADJ (Engine of Art Democracy and Justice) year-long program Living in Common in the Precarious Souths, for which she received a curatorial award of excellence by the Association of Art Museum Curators ( US). In 2001, she was one of the curators of the 1st Tirana Biennial while in 2003 she was both the commissionaire and the curator for the Greek Pavilion in  the 50th Biennale di Venezia, and  in 2011, she co-curated the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial, (A Rock and a Hard Place) together with Paolo Colombo and Mahita El Bacha Urieta Between 2013 and 2014 she was the curator of exhibitions, public programs and also initiated the curators’ residency  for Schwarz Foundation -Art Space Pythagorion in Samos, Greece. As an independent curator she has curated multiple exhibitions internationally including Her/Histories, ( Museum of Cycladic Art , Athens),  The Gesture, ( MOMUs, Thessaloniki, Quarter Florence) Anathena ( Deste Foundation, Athens ) WIR/We , curated by 2020 ( Christine Konig Gallery, Vienna) Epistemologies of the Sun, (Rebecca Camhi Gallery , Athens) among many others.

Fokidis has juried for international awards including the Furla Award, the Deste Prize, the Bes Revelaco /Serralves Museum award, the Videobrasil 2017, the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019, and the competition for the Holocaust Monument in Athens, among others. She is also part of the editorial board and a regular editor of Flash Art Magazine and has contributed texts in various other arts and culture publications, theoretical book anthologies and artists’ catalogues

She  is currently one of the four curatorial advisors for Spark art fair in Vienna which is one of the very few art fairs that is curated in its entirety.