2026 | LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER
Contemporary Art Exhibition

Volissos School, Chios, Greece
11 July - 30 August 2026
Opening Hours: Daily Except Mondays, 10:00 - 14:00 & 19:00 - 22:00

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 presents LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER, a group exhibition unfolding across the two floors of Volissos School. Bringing together fourteen artists from eleven countries, the exhibition features newly commissioned and existing works spanning painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, sound, video, installations and digital media.

The exhibition takes the form of a letter and proposes an act of address, creating a space in which to unpack the ambivalent emotions that shape our relationship with a father who leaves promises unfulfilled and withholds protection and care. The “ailing father” emerges here not only as a biological figure but as a broader social and political construct: a lack of infrastructure, a patriarchal structure, a failing system of care, an ideology, a form of governance. Through experiences of guilt, fear, disappointment, rage, shame, betrayal or forgiveness, the exhibition attempts to give form to emotions that often remain unspoken yet continue to shape individual and collective life.

LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER draws on the contemporary situation in Amani, the northwestern region of Chios. Once an independent municipality, Amani is experiencing a sharper population decline than any other part of the island, while the primary sector, its traditional economic base, continues to weaken. More recently, the prospect of mining developments has caused concern among local residents, reflecting wider anxieties across Chios. The devastating wildfire in August 2025 marked another turning point. Having burned more than 15,800 hectares and threatened the Natura 2000 protected area north of Amani, the fire altered the landscape and exacerbated an already fragile situation. Volissos, the gateway to Amani, stands itself at the intersection of multiple uncertainties: environmental, social, economic and demographic. It is within this landscape, characterised by loss, resilience and precarity, that the exhibition takes its point of departure.

The exhibition is hosted at the Schools of Volissos – “Michalis Papamavros” building, an all-through school, the last public educational unit in operation within the territory. Shaped by the consequences of depopulation and the threat of future closure, the school becomes a vessel through which to consider the exhibition’s central concerns. As an institution dedicated to transmitting knowledge, the school also embodies the idea of the ailing father: a structure that cannot guarantee security and continuity for the next generation of students.

Spanning classrooms and corridors, the exhibition comprises multiple voices and standpoints. Each artwork acts as a paragraph, annotation, postscript, pause or revision, introducing different temporalities and perspectives into this collaborative writing exercise. Together, the works traverse dystopian realities, lost futures and hauntologies, as well as vulnerability, resilience and imaginaries of hope.

The participating artists approach these themes from distinct perspectives: works by Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq, Danh Võ and Nasan Tur challenge established hierarchies of power and rethink the relationship between caregiver and dependent. Cindy Sherman, Eleni Odysseos, John Gerrard and Vasilis Papageorgiou share ecological concerns, questioning extractive relationships to land and nature. Arda Asena, Lito Kattou, Kiriakos Tompolidis and Paky Vlassopoulou explore themes of absence, migration and diasporic identity through craft traditions, folklore collections and the preservation of cultural memory. Shezad Dawood, Evi Kalogiropoulou and Zohra Opoku draw on mythology and embodied histories to explore renewal, transformation, resilience and forms of repair.

LETTER TO AN AILING FATHER invites visitors to engage with the artworks by reflecting on their own memories, experiences and associations in a dialogue with the exhibition. The letter is proposed as a way of confronting unresolved issues, attempting to articulate what has been inherited, and imagining alternative forms of responsibility, care and collective commitment beyond the structures that have shaped the present.

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