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Edition print of 40 by Pennie Key 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.
Pennie Key (Penelope Koliopoulou) is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Athens. Between 2010 and 2020 she lived in London, receiving an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2016. For the period 2020-2021, she is a fellow of Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Holland). She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021). Her work is largely about power dynamics, sexuality, and gender. It’s usually intimate, intense, and personal. She has a make-do aesthetic and prefers to use cheap, democratic materials, such as adhesive tape and photocopies. Important part of her research engages with martial arts and various forms of sex work.
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.