As part of the This is Athens – City Festival, the City of Athens Art Gallery is presenting Dimitra Siaterli’s new solo exhibition Cohesive networks from May 14th to June 21st. The exhibition is organised with the support of the City of Athens Cultural, Sports & Youth Organisation (OPANDA) and is curated by art historian and museologist Vassia Magoula.

Starting from the 1980s and 1990s through to the artist’s most recent body of work, the exhibition traces milestones and themes from different periods of her practice. Prints, installations, and flat sculptures are presented in dialogue with new pieces.

Through an experiential and metaphorical passage across space and time, the exhibition maps out forms of resistance and resilience against chaos, absurdity, and alienation. Ultimately, it affirms our vital need for connection, and reminds us of our place and responsibility as parts of a broader collective network.

The artist’s early works are defined by a deep engagement with the form. Generating shapes stems from a structural drive to reconnect with the primordial, while materiality itself transforms into images charged with vital, archaic energy. Printmaking matrices converse with large-scale intaglio prints, installations, paintings, and pieces made of leather and wood. Siatеrli’s experimentations push the boundaries of printmaking, as she creates organic geometries born from the imprints of cut up matrices, as well as the negative space surrounding them. These experiments nurture the artist’s search for the primordial essence of things, reaching back to the roots of structure, form, and matter. They give rise to shapes that evoke minerals, fossils, hybrid zoomorphic creatures, and forms that seem to surface from within the earth or the depths of time, each eventually finding its place among a family of peculiar beings.

An in-situ spider web, spun from fine copper threads, located in the middle of the exhibition space, serves as a transitional passage in the visitor’s journey. The ephemeral weaving scales up the organic structure built by nature’s tiny architects, thus bringing it in dialogue with the architectural shell of the space, and transforming it into a conceptual labyrinth. Born of painstaking repetition, the web signifies the threshold between threat and protection, entrapment and safety, connection and separation, resilience and fragility. In the arrangement of the copper mesh and its inevitably temporary coexistence with the space, Siatеrli traces the poetics of ephemerality, a healing reconnection with collectivity networks, and a descent into the inner, labyrinthine regions of the unconscious.

The journey concludes with the human figure, a theme that runs consistently through her entire body of work, carrying rich interpretations and taking on multiple visual forms. Complex networks of figures are shaped through grids, perforated flat sculptures, spatial installations, and prints. Small human forms spring up in rhythmic sequences, gather in processions or dissolve into labyrinths, sometimes solitary, at other times bound together in intricate groupings, composing a profound meditation on human (co)existence.

 

Exhibition curator: Vassia Magoula, Art historian – Museologist

The exhibition is part of the This is Athens – City Festival, with the support of the City of Athens Cultural, Sports & Youth Organisation (OPANDA), and is organised and produced by the ATHENS PRINTMAKING ART CENTER – PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI C.N.P.P.

 

Parallel Program
Sunday, May 17 and Saturday, May 23
1:00pm– 2:00pm | Guided Tours (up to 20 people)

Sunday, May 24
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Presentation of the retrospective publication on the work of Dimitra Siaterli
1:00pm – 2:00pm | Art intervention at the “House of Identities” with open public participation.

Sunday, June 7

12:00pm | Music performance by Cid Carmo
A unique music intervention featuring the tarhu, violin, didgeridoo, and Tibetan singing bowls. Sounds, improvisations, and live melodies converge with visual arts, offering a multidimensional perspective on the exhibits. Free admission.

Credits
Production: ATHENS PRINTMAKING ART CENTER – PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI C.N.P.P.
Curated by: Vassia Magoula
English translation: Myrto Vratsanou
Communication – promotion: ATHENS PRINTMAKING ART CENTER – PANDOLFINI & SIATERLI C.N.P.P
Exhibition lighting design: Maria Maneta
Installation of artworks: Katerina Exarchopoulou, Stratos Katsikogiannis. Pino Pandolfini
Lighting: Stefanos Papathanasiou
Graphic design: Ioanna Siaterli
Printing: G.Kostopoulos – Graphic Arts Striligas

Bio

Dimitra Siaterli (b. 1952, Argos) is an Athens-based visual artist. She studied Painting and Decoration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (1971–1977), and  in 1977, together with Pino Pandolfini, she co-founded the Athens Printmaking Art Center – Pandolfini & Siaterli.  Her work transcends the boundaries between artistic media, ranging from printmaking, painting and illustration to sculpture, and in-situ installations. A dedicated educator and advocate for the medium, Siaterli taught Printmaking and Printed Art at the University of Western Macedonia (2010-2016) and has been conducting specialized printmaking seminars since 1990. She is a founding member of the Athens Printmaking Center Group, the Greek Printmakers’ Association, and the artist group En Flo. Since 2018, as co-founder of the Athens Printmaking Art Center – Pandolfini & Siaterli C.N.P.P. and the ETCH INK art space, she has curated and organized printmaking exhibitions with both local and international artists. Since 1975, her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, and is represented in major public and private collections, including the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, the Municipal Gallery of Athens, the OTE Group Telecommunications Museum, the Alpha Bank Art Collection, Florica P. Kyriacopoulos Art Collection among others.

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Info

City of Athens Art Gallery (Building B’)

Leonidou & Myllerou, Metaxourghio, Athens

Opening: Thursday 14 May 2026, 19:00

Exhibition duration: May 14 – June 21, 2026

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 – 19:00, Sunday 10:00 – 16:00. Monday closed

Τ. 210 5202420

www.opanda.gr | www.athens-printmaking.com