iLiana Fokianaki is a Greek curator, writer, theorist, educator[1] and former journalist based in Athens and Rotterdam. In May 2022, she was announced as the curator of the 13th edition of the annual festival Survival Kit,[2] organised by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, in Riga
She is the founder and director of contemporary art institution State of Concept in Athens,[3][4][5] where she curated solo exhibitions of artists such as Laure Prouvost,[6] the research agency Forensic Architecture,[7] Croatian artist Sanja Iveković,[8][9] Dutch collective Metahaven,[10] the film collective Rojava Film Commune.[11] The exhibition of the Rojava Film Commune Fokianaki curated, titled "Forms of Freedom", was featured in Art Forum magazine in 2020,[12] and has so far travelled to the following institutions: Galerija Nova, in Zagreb,[13] the exhibition space of e-flux publications in New York [14] and Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art of Slovenia, in Ljubljana.[15]
A retrospective of Fokianaki's institution titled State (in) Concepts was exhibited at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris in 2017.[16] Fokianaki was invited by artist Kader Attia to curate a group exhibition inspired by the program of State of Concept, at La Colonie (Art Space) in May 2018, titled "The Trials of Justice".[17][18] She has curated the solo exhibition of artist Kapwani Kiwanga at the Formerly Known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam,[19][20] which coincided with Kiwanga's award for the Marcel Duchamp Prize of the Centre Pompidou.[21][22][23]
Fokianaki's work explores the relation between art, formations of power and how they metamorphose under the influence of geopolitics, national identity and cultural and anthropological histories.[24][25] Her recent project "The Bureau of Care" received the Solidarity Grant of the European Cultural Foundation.[26]
Together with curator Antonia Alampi, she is the co-founder of Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small-scale organizations of contemporary art and culture.[27] Future Climates was part of the "Substance 100", a new, annual list, that outlines a diverse array of artists, activists, collectives, movements and organizations making a substantial change in the world, launched by on-line museum and platform "Collecteurs".[28]
Fokianaki was curator and programmer at Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp from 2017-2019, where she curated two large-scale group exhibitions: the exhibitions Extra Citizen (2017)[29] and Extra States: Nations in Liquidation (2018).[30]
Fokianaki is a lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) of the ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands,[31] and was a guest lecturer at HISK in Ghent, Belgium [32] and a resident curator at the NTU Center for Contemporary Art in Singapore.[33]
She writes for various international art journals and publications, discussing issues ranging from art, politics, to ethics[34] such as a joint opinion piece on art, economy and documenta's arrival in Athens, written with former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis[35] and an opinion piece around the discussion of looted artefacts and specifically the Parthenon Marbles for frieze (magazine).[36]
Fokianaki holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from Oxford Brookes University in Oxford and a M.A. in Arts Criticism and Management from City University London.