SECCMA Trade: Details of Love
Chioma Ebinama, Adham Faramawy, Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Pennie Key, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Karolina Krassouli, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Spyros Rennt, Giles Round, Sin Wai Kin, Himali Singh Soin, P. Staff, Bones Tan Jones, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen.
Curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos
When was the last time that you inadvertently broke out a little smile? Or felt warm inside, albeit fleetingly? Or your body and mind were moved, even if just by a tiny bit? When was the last time that you observed or obsessed with a fragment that points somewhere else but is so powerful in and of itself? Anxious about its sweeping force, we often forget the love that is in the details. Unruly, ungovernable, radical, delirious, transformative love inhabits everything that it is part of, no matter how small. These fragments, details of an ever expansive, changing cosmic flow, once released and observed, are capable of raising waves. Beyond the categories of the human, beyond attempts to define or control it, love is a catalyst of change, perhaps the most powerful. Its pieces, like transgressive undercurrents, set the pace, they track the movement, like the bass hitting the body allowing for the melody to travel, change and express itself.
The artists who are part of this initiative are asked to send their details of love, to share a piece that perhaps has been operating alone somewhere, which, once in focus, can emanate new light and foster new connections, by becoming part of a networked expression of love in all its forms, registers and channels.
Moving like vessels in the sea, details of love produce waves that can travel its expanse until the shore feels their impact, big or small. Aware of the depths of the world beneath them and of its currents, they precipitate like foam that fleetingly marks its vast, fluid surface. The inaugural SECCMA Trade, curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos, looks at the details of community, solidarity, collectivity and of loving. Details of Love forms a collection of different things that are important to those who love and a connection across shared principles that have allowed their existence.
All profits of SECCMA Trade: Details of Love will be donated to Emantes International LGBTQIA+ Solidarity, a charitable social cooperative enterprise that provides psychosocial support to lgbtqia+ refugees/migrants.
SECCMA Trade is an initiative of SERAPIS & SECCMA Trust* that expresses a vision of exchange and community through art projects of concurrent synergy and support. It forms a network or a hub port of collaboration towards a chosen aim to establish a method of ever-expanding openness.
ABOUT
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.
Kostas Stasinopoulos is a curator and writer working at the intersection of art, ecology and identity. He is Associate Curator, Live Programmes at Serpentine, London, focusing on Back to Earth and General Ecology. He served as Associate Curator at The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center and has collaborated with the Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, Frieze, Art Athina and the Athens Biennale. Kostas received his PhD in History of Art from University of York (2016) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Onassis Foundation and NEON. He holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2011) and a BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College London (2004). Together with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, he is the co-editor of 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth (Penguin, 2021).
