Yellow brick  /  Steps  /  STEP 69 | Weaving Hydro-Feminist Routes of Uncanny Athens: Nea Ionia, Küplü, Cappadocia

STEP 69 | Weaving Hydro-Feminist Routes of Uncanny Athens: Nea Ionia, Küplü, Cappadocia

with Yellow Brick, Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki and Anastasia Diavasti07/07/25, Now Steps

Yellow Brick presents the interdisciplinary artistic and research project “Weaving Hydro-Feminist Routes of Uncanny Athens: Nea Ionia, Küplü, Cappadocia,” a project that explores the relationship between memory, migration, and women’s experience through contemporary artistic practices.

Starting from Nea Ionia- a city formed after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and still shaped today by successive waves of migration – the project seeks to trace historical fragments, social inscriptions, and intangible cultural memories, connecting them to the broader urban transformation of Athens.

The project aims to bring stories of transition into dialogue with contemporary thinking around collective learning, politics of care, and inclusion. It examines these practices both historically and in the present, highlighting their significance in the creation of mechanisms of coexistence within an increasingly intercultural society.

At the core of the research lies the role of women in the formation of communities after the forced population exchange: practices of care, labor, and collective survival, and the ways these are transmitted across generations. Through oral histories, postmemory, and a hydro-feminist approach, the project foregrounds the fluidity of identities and the importance of inclusion in contemporary intercultural societies. In this way, present and future chapters of displacement are examined within a continuous movement of arrivals and departures.

Three artists- Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Anastasia Diavasti, and Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki- third- and fourth-generation descendants of refugees from Asia Minor, in collaboration with research advisor Eliana Otta, develop a collective artistic narrative extending from Nea Ionia to Cappadocia. They employ sound, the body, weaving, and everyday practices as tools for artistic research.

The project unfolds as a route of encounter and sharing: an experiential journey of the three artists with the places they inhabit, as well as visits to ancestral lands: Prokopi (Ürgüp), Ayvali of Cappadocia, and Küplü in Bilecik, collecting material through walking practices. Fragments of customs, tastes, songs, and everyday rituals form the material of the research. Emerging from care workshops, knowledge-exchange practices, and the sedimentation of the journey,We invite you to come to Nea Ionia so that we can complete this journey together.

 

On Saturday, January 17, 14:30–16:00, we will meet at the “Dimitra Gounaridi” (Evaggelikis Scholis 5, Nea Ionia 142 31)  pastry and phyllo workshop, where together with Ilias Gounaridis we will prepare tik tik, a traditional Turkish pasta.

We will then move to the Yellow Brick (Eptaritgiou 7, Nea Ionia 142 31) from 16:00 – 21:00, where we will cook and share the dish, exchanging stories of taste.

At the same time, elements and traces of the route—from the personal stories of the artists as well as those of the journey’s participants—will inhabit the space, inviting visitors into an audiovisual walk through:
the installation by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki, the booklet Küplü / Κιουπλιά by Stella Dimitrakopoulou, based on her archival material , and a 30-minute short movie edited and dialogue with Anastasia Diavasti, a film by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki titled Μουσαφίρης / Guest / Misafir.

The installation will remain open to the public by appointment, as well as on:
 Wednesday 21/1/2026, 19:00–21:00
Thursday 22/1/2026, when the journey will conclude with a performance by Stella Dimitrakopoulou, based on her personal archive.

A project by Yellow Brick 
 With the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture 

Concept & Curation:
 Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki 

Curatorial Advisor:
 Eliana Otta 

Artists – Collaborators:
 Stella Dimitrakopoulou 
 Anastasia Diavasti 
 Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki 

Advisors in Cappadocia:
 Bülent Özçelik 
 Şükran Ünser 

Cinematography / Editing:
 Anastasia Diavasti 

Photography:
 Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki 

Special thanks to Gizem Üstüner  for accompanying the field research in Turkey and contributing to translation, and to Aysu Arican for the subtitle translation of Μουσαφίρης / Guest / Misafir.

is a dance and performance artist. She holds a PhD from Trinity Laban (London). In her practice-based doctoral research «(Ιl)legitimate Performances: Copying, Authorship and the Canon» (2016), she unpicked notions central to the evaluation of choreographic works and practices.
In 2009 she graduated with distinction from the MA program Dance Theatre «The body in performance» (Laban). In her master thesis she unpicked the relationship between performance and everyday life, working with actions such as cooking, dining and sleeping, as a means of investigating the intermingling of public and private spaces.
In her latest works, she looks into dance as transformation of energy and as a process of exchange of qualities between human and other (im)material bodies. Experimenting with vocal and movement improvisation, she creates rituals that take the form of live performances, videos and installations.
Since 2014, she co-runs the project ‘Philosophy on our feet’ and has organized the 2nd International Symposium Performance Philosophy School of Athens (EMST, 2017). At the same time, she participates in research projects that combine art with technology.
She teaches at the University of Peloponnese and also works as performer, dramaturg and production manager. She has worked with Tino Sehgal, Dora Garcia, Les Gens d’Uterpan, William Hunt, Lea Anderson, Synthesis 748, A priori dance co and others

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.

Anastasia Natasa Diavasti incorporates performance, curating, photography and video to create performative experiments, stretching the seams of art and activism. Through her camera or by curating collaborative processes, she pursues the exploration of human and interspiecies symbiosis, as an artistic and social structure. She lives and works in Athens since 2006.

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