Description

Edition print of 40 by Giles Round for ‘SECCMA Trade: Details of Love’, a project curated Kostas Stasinopoulos organized by SECCMA Trust, with all profits in support of Emantes – International Lgbtqia+ Solidarity.

Giles Round is an artist who currently lives and works in London & St Leonards on Sea. Round works across disciplines – including art, design and architecture – through a wide range of techniques and approaches including ceramics, furniture, painting, print and sculpture. Recent exhibitions include: Untitled, circa 1994, Brighton CCA, Brighton (2020); The Director (AKA A fairly inarticulate and insecure businessman), The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire (2018); Living with Buildings, Wellcome Collection, London (2018); 1967, Goswell Road, Paris (2018); They bow. Curtain. No applause., Spike Island, Bristol (2017), 91 days of clear blue skies, Quench, Margate (2021).

Emantes – International Lgbtqia+ Solidarity is a Social Cooperative Enterprise based in Athens, Greece, that was founded in July 2018 by experienced volunteers in the LGBTQIA+ refugee field as well as in feminist and/or queer groups. Some of the founding members were refugees/asylum seekers at the time. Emantes’ mission is twofold. On the one hand, they provide direct or indirect psychosocial support to LGBTQIA+ refugees/asylum seekers. On the other hand, they raise awareness on the issues the LGBTQIA+ refugee/migrant community faces, by highlighting the multiple repressions posed by its dual identity and its invisibility within the general refugee/migrant population. Emantes means “we” in kaliarda, the slang used by homosexuals in Greece during the 1940s, in order to safely communicate with one another. In modern Greek, “imantes” means straps, which to Emantes are a symbol of solidarity. Straps can lift or hold together very heavy objects. So, in a way, Emantes understand and envision solidarity through diversity and adversity, a connection with “others” in the most unlikely combinations.

SECCMA Trust is a creative venture of SERAPIS that aims to form an alliance supporting the growth and expansion of contemporary art locally and internationally.