Yellow brick  /  Steps  /  STEP 79 | Geographies of Intimacy, Encountering History in island courtyards, through the borderland narratives of women.

STEP 79 | Geographies of Intimacy, Encountering History in island courtyards, through the borderland narratives of women.

with , ,  and 03/11/26, 15/05/2027 Now Steps

OPENING
Thursday 12, 18:30–21:30

Exhibition opening hours
Friday 13 November, 18:00–20:00
Saturday 14 November, 18:00–20:00

Yellow Brick presents an artistic and research-based project that brings together the narratives, memories and lived experiences of women from Kalymnos and Crete. Through oral history, moving image and poetry, the project explores how everyday life, personal relationships and practices of care shape historical knowledge and collective memory.

Artists Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki and Niki Koutouzi travelled to these two island locations, with which they share different and deeply personal connections. For Vasiliki, Crete is a place of summer returns and of a relationship with Ririka that has grown over time. For Niki, Kalymnos is the place where she lives, and where her personal story intersects with the everyday life of the local community.

In the video, the narratives of Ririka and Koula meet the landscapes of the two islands. Images, voices, gestures and different temporalities come together in a polyphonic narrative, where the personal encounters the collective and the landscape emerges as a carrier of memory. Alongside the video, a poem by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki expands the artistic research, making room for the emotional dimensions of these encounters and the relationships that develop between people and places.

Drawing on a feminist approach to oral history, the project foregrounds women’s experiences as an active part of historical narratives. Listening, encounter and exchange become tools of artistic research, connecting the past with the present. Everyday life emerges as a site of knowledge production, where personal stories acquire collective significance and contribute to the ongoing formation of History.

Credits
Artists: Niki Koutouzi, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki
Curator: Niovi Zarabouka-Hatzimanou
Feminist theoretical guidance: Dr. Isabel Gutiérrez Sánchez
Organised by: Yellow Brick

With the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

is the founder of Yellow Brick – research a project space/residency devoted to artist's research and playground/testing ground for exhibition making.Her personal work entangles materiality through methodologies of exploring, collecting and archiving, resulting in the creation of sculptural manifestations around the ideas of topos. For Sifostratoudaki, materiality stands as a broader term for framing geography, object, humans, language and gestures and sculpture as a moving organism.

Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou, is an Athens based curator and co-Director of Counterpoints in Greece. Her research interests focus on socially and politically engaged art projects working on themes like national identity, citizenship, memory and reclaiming public space.

(b. 1985, Kalymnos, Greece) is an artist, filmmaker, and cultural organiser based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, and Athens, Greece. Their expanded practice explores how memory, meaning, knowledge, and power are constructed and contested within the layered histories of people and places, with a focus on counter-narratives and their re-articulation in public consciousness. Grounded in relational approaches and dialogue, Koutouzi’s practice is process-led and informed by ongoing engagements with theatre, mythology, poetry, and cultural rituals and traditions.

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