Until Wednesday, November 5, the public will have the opportunity to visit the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) to see the exhibition Anatomy of Architecture by internationally acclaimed African-American sculptress Simone Leigh. The exhibition, which opened last April, is made possible thanks to a donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and admission is free.

Three iconic bronze sculptures—Vessel, Bisi, and Herm—have been installed in the SNFCC Marketplace. They were first presented in 2023 at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The works impress with their abstract form, characteristic examples of Simone Leigh’s sculpture, which often connects the female body with household containers or architectural elements in her compositions, thus focusing her interest on overlooked stories of care, labor, and consumption. The decision to present these works at the Agora was intended to bring visitors into contact—or even confrontation—with the three imposing sculptural forms, offering yet another powerful visual experience that reinforces the SNFCC’s reputation as a constantly evolving platform for Art in Public Space, aimed at both the less initiated audience as well as more familiar visitors.

Over the past twenty years, Simone Leigh has created a multifaceted body of work that includes sculpture, video, and installations, centered on an ongoing exploration of Black female identity and its perceptions. Leigh describes her work as “autoethnographic,” and her sculptures often draw on forms from African art and traditions. She is the first African American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2022, winning the Golden Lion for best participation in the central exhibition “Milk of Dreams” for her monumental sculpture, Brick House.

The exhibition was accompanied by a rich program of parallel events, which will conclude on Sunday, November 2, with three workshops exploring black female identity through music, dance, and sculpture, inviting the public to participate in experiential processes that highlight art as a space for memory, care, and collective expression.

Τhe Workshops:

Gumboot Dance & Click Songs Workshop

Sunday, November 2, 12:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Market

For families

Free admission

The Gumboot Dance & Click Songs workshop focuses on the collective experience of the African diaspora, as highlighted in the works featured in the exhibition. Simone Leigh invites the audience into a space of deep embodied memory, where the black female form is no longer presented as an object of observation, but as a vessel of knowledge, trauma, communication, care, and resistance. The body functions as a monument, but also as a refuge—a space where cultural identity is preserved and redefined.

Through voice, movement, and rhythm, the members of The Gumboot Trio help participants connect with unfamiliar narratives, listen to their bodies, and communicate with them. They will have the opportunity to learn the history and basic patterns of South African Gumboot dance, which shaped and still influences female identity, and discover the traditions of click singing and how the black experience of apartheid connects with Simone Leigh’s sculptures and the role of women.

Design-implementation: The Gumboot Trio, Zandile Ngubane, Irene Adwoa Sackey, and Jane Njeri Mwaura, in collaboration with anthropologist Grace Chimela Eze Nwoke, for the collective work in progress “the AfroGreeks” by the Døcumatism collective.

A vessel for me – The art of micro-sculpture

Sunday, November 2, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

NLG Reception

For children aged 6 and up

Free admission on a first-come, first-served basis

The workshop is inspired by Simone Leigh’s sculptural practice, where the form of the container becomes a metaphor for the body, care, and the power that is born out of community. Children are invited to experiment with shape, balance, and materiality, creating lightweight vessels from wire, fabric, and humble materials that transform into personal micro-sculptural forms. Through the process of wrapping, tying, and composing, participants will reapproach sculpture as an act of care and a gesture of coexistence.

Design-implementation: Michalitsa Kozakopoulou, visual artist-educator
Workshop assistant: Archontoula Tsatsoulaki, visual artist

Listening Club: Female identity through African-American musical tradition

Coordinated by radio producer Giorgos Florakis

Sunday, November 2, 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Market

For adults

Free admission on a first-come, first-served basis

Renowned radio producer George Florakis hosts a Listening Club inspired by Leigh’s multifaceted visual work, which continually expands black female identity and perceptions, delving into the influences of African art and tradition.

Taking Leigh’s creative process as a starting point, participants will explore female identity in some of the best-known musical genres, such as gospel, blues, soul, jazz, and hip hop, which, although developed in America, trace their origins back to Africa. At the same time, they will listen to great figures of the African-American musical tradition, such as Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone from the older generation, as well as Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Little Simz, Joy Crookes, Celeste, and Samara Joy from the younger generation.

INFO

Simone Leigh 

Anatomy of Architecture

till November the 5th 

Agora, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC)

Aven. Syngrou 364, Kallithea

Admission Free

You mau find a video of the exhibition here.

More Information at www.snfcc.org and on the social media @SNFCC.