The Art Explora Festival unveils the programme of its Piraeus stopover
by Art Explora Festival 16 Sep 06:29 NZST
3-12 October 2025
The Art Explora Festival © Art Explora Festival
Featuring headliners Adonis Foniadakis, Lenio Kaklea, Sofia Mavragani, Manolis Pappos, Panos Charalambous and Kyriakos Kalaitzidis & En Chordais.
After its stop in Rijeka (Croatia), the Art Explora Festival and its museum boat will sail to Greece for the very first time and dock at the port of Piraeus, from 3 to 12 October 2025 for 10 days of free art and cultural experiences.
Free and open to everyone, the Art Explora Festival is a travelling festival that sails across seas and oceans aboard the world's first museum boat. It offers innovative artistic and cultural experiences through a programme of immersive visual, sound, and virtual reality experiences presented on board the museum boat, as well as exhibitions quayside, and in a range of venues in the host cities. The live programme — including performances, concerts, dance, installations, talks, and workshops — is curated by the renowned Greek curator Katerina Tselou.
"Mobility and artistic creation are powerful tools to help challenge perspectives and share images and stories to create different relationships with the world. Boarding a boat is an experience in itself; it's even more remarkable when you find unique artistic and cultural endeavours on that boat, as well as quayside." Frédéric Jousset, Art Explora Founder and President
"Accor, Europe's leading hotel operator, is committed to supporting innovative and ambitious initiatives that reflect our vision of positive hospitality, focused on local communities. We are proud to support the Art Explora Festival, the first museum boat offering access to art to a wide audience. At each of its stops in the Mediterranean, our hotels and our Heartists. employees will be mobilized, with their hearts and their artist souls, to promote this commitment locally and help build the hospitality of tomorrow." Karelle Lamouche, Chief Operating Officer Europe & North Africa | Premium, Midscale & Economy
Live Programme Quayside
Through dance, music, film, participatory projects, and powerful performances, the Piraeus programme captures the spirit of the Mediterranean as a space of exchange, tension, imagination and resistance.
"In Piraeus — a mesh of cultures, bodies, and maritime routes — the Mediterranean emerges as a multilayered space of experience, tension, and imagination. Personal and political histories, ecological concerns, and female perspectives come together to form an explosive, polyphonic landscape, where art becomes an act of poetry and resistance" - Katerina Tselou, Curator of the Greek stopover of the Art Explora Festival
Katerina Tselou is an Athensbased curator. She was the curator of the Pavilion of Greece at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). She was Curatorial Advisor at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, as well as Assistant to the Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk (2014-17). She was co-curator at the 4th Athens Biennale in 2013 and from 2009 to 2013 she was the curator of the visual arts program at the National Theatre of Greece. She has also organized projects as an independent curator in Greece, collaborating with institutions such as the Athens School of Fine Arts, Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly, the European Film Festival. She is currently Advisor at the Minister's Office in the Greek Ministry of Culture.
Live Programme Highlights
Performances
- Adonis Foniadakis - Boléro, an hypnotic, ritual-like dance performance blending fragility and strength - October 3
- Adonis Vais - In ex situ, an activation reclaiming public space through collective choreographic actions - October 3 & October 9
- Sofia Mavragani - Glorious Epic, a dynamic performance merging body, voice, and sociopolitical commentary - October 4
- Panos Charalambous Performance, an installation that transforms into a sonic performance, where traditional and folk Mediterranean sounds intertwine with movement, gradually evolving into a new and unexpected form - October 5
- Lenio Kaklea - Untitled (Figures), a queer dance lexicon that reclaims female embodiment through iconic figures - October 9 & October 10
Concerts & DJ sets
- George Moraitis - A Spontaneous Symphony for Barrels, a multimedia performance inspired by maritime heritage, life and history of a boat - October 3 & October 12
- DJ sets x HER Project, DJs Fofi Tsesmeli aka Fo and VRGN, both from the all-female music project HER, energizing the night - October 3, October 4 & October 5
- Manolis Pappos Rebetiko Night, a legendary composer and performer, Manolis Pappos leads an evocative journey into rebetiko, rooted in the port city of Piraeus - October 5
- New World Folk Experience, a bold fusion of traditional motifs with electronic soundscapes - October 10
- Kyriakos Kalaitzidis & En Chordais - The Odyssey, a musical journey across the Aegean archipelago and its maritime memories - October 11
Film Screenings
- Eva Stefani, one of the leading voices in documentary and experimental film, guides us through the paradoxical world of history and the unseen layers and marginal stories of everyday life with a subversive gaze - October 5 & October 8
- Evi Kalogiropoulou, a dynamic voice in the new Greek visual and film scene, she redefines notions of community, gender, and labor, building bridges between the local and the global - October 5
Community experiences
- Katerina Stefanidaki & Zafos Xagoraris - Instantaneous Geometries, a unique printing workshop for school students and other visitors in the port of Piraeus - October 11 & October 12
- Archipelago Network - Echoes of the Aegean, a full evening dedicated to Cycladic maritime culture, with live radio, documentary footage, music and more - October 11
- SCOLA SOCIETY Celebration, closing the festival with communal music and intergenerational celebration - October 12
Workshops
Participatory workshops, educational activities, and meetings with artists and curators will take place throughout the week. Audience engagement is a major challenge for the travelling festival, which provides access and participation modes facilitating key artistaudience encounters. Visitor services are adapted to all audiences, combining human outreach and digital tools. Outreach initiatives include artist-led workshops and awareness-raising about contemporary issues in the Mediterranean.
Immersive experiences on board the Museum Boat
- On the upper deck - an immersive audio experience centred around the richness and diversity of the Mediterranean, designed and produced by Ircam, the French Institute for Research in Acoustics/Music attached to Centre Pompidou in Paris.
- Inside the boat - travel through time and space with the Mediterranean Wonders virtual reality series. Developed in partnership with Ubisoft, this experience allows you to visit iconic Mediterranean cities such as Athens, Alexandria, and Venice at the height of their splendor.
The Exhibition Pavilions Quayside
- The immersive Present exhibition created as part of an exceptional collaboration with the Louvre Museum, highlights female figures in Mediterranean civilisation through the digitisation of some of the Louvre's collections. This two-stage event starts with an introductory film, which provides context for the subsequent immersive experience that takes place in a 16-metre-long tunnel covered with 120 m. of LED screens.
- The Under the azure contemporary art exhibition in the central pavilion is a collection of works by around 20 artists that takes inspiration from the evocative power of the Mediterranean Sea, the myths surrounding it, the creatures that inhabit it and the visions it conjures up. The artists featured include: Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal, Edi Hila, Marguerite Humeau, Marisa Merz, Joan Mir. and Anri Sala.
Curators: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel and Blanche de Lestrange
- The photo pavilion houses the Undertow exhibition of photography and moving images which focuses on relationships between hospitality, migration and exile through the work of around 15 contemporary artists from the Arab world. The artists featured include: Majd Abdel Hamid, Bouchra Khalili, Randa Maroufi, Valentin Nouja.m, Sara Sadik and Akram Zaatari.
Curators: Amanda Abi Khalil and Danielle Makhoul
Discover the full programme online