LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER

Contemporary Art Exhibition

11 July - 30 August 2026
Volissos School, Chios, Greece
Exhibition Opening: 11 July, 19:00

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Arda Asena (Turkey/USA), Shezad Dawood (United Kingdom), Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq (Bangladesh), John Gerrard (Ireland), Evi Kalogiropoulou (Greece), Lito Kattou (Cyprus), Eleni Odysseos (Cyprus), Zohra Opoku (Germany/Ghana), Vasilis Papageorgiou (Greece), Cindy Sherman (USA), Kiriakos Tompolidis (Germany), Nasan Tur (Germany), Paky Vlassopoulou (Greece) and Danh Võ (Denmark/Vietnam)

Curated by Akis Kokkinos

DEO announces the group exhibition LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER at Volissos School in northwestern Chios. 14 artists from 11 countries present new commissions alongside existing works across a range of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, sound, video, installation and digital media.

The exhibition explores the paternal figure as a site of authority, absence and emotional deprivation. The “father,” whether understood as an individual subject or a social construct, is approached through a condition of diminishment: an inadequate framework assembled from inert and disarticulated materials, one that relinquishes the responsibilities of care to such an extent that the relationship between caregiver and dependent is often reversed. At the same time, the exhibition foregrounds practices of craft and the collection of folkloric material, as forms of situated knowledge and collective endurance. Through these gestures emerge modes of solidarity, cultivating conditions of mutual support and resilience in times of precarity.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme curated by Evita Kyriazi, unfolding throughout its duration.