OIKEIŌSIS

 

OIKEIŌSIS

The Stoic concept of Oikeiōsis (loosely translated as kinship) inspires a sensorial solo exhibition of new work by artist Pavlina Vagioni, presented by the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation,  on the occasion of the 61st Biennale Arte, Venice 6 May-25 October Spazio Tana 2127/A, near the entrance of the Arsenale

Oikeiōsis: the ancient Stoic concept of expanding the circle of care — from self, to family, to all humanity Etymology: From oikos (οἶκος) = household, home → the act of "making something one's own" or "recognizing something as belonging to oneself" Meaning: kinship, affinity, co-belonging, connectedness

This May, the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation launches its first project beyond Greece, presenting Oikeiōsis, a solo exhibition of new work by Greek artist Pavlina Vagioni at Spazio Tana in Venice, on the occasion of the 61st Biennale Arte. Curated by Dr. Laura Augusta, Jane Dale Owen Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Oikeiōsis draws on Vagioni's poetic and visceral visual and sonic language, which reimagines myth and philosophy as lived, embodied experience. Across two rooms, visitors move through a sensorial passage from isolation to kinship. Warm, immersive, and meditative, the exhibition pulses with light, sound, and the presence of other bodies, in direct dialogue with the Biennale's theme, In Minor Keys, which calls for healing, resonance, and the radicality of joy amid a world in crisis. Vagioni comments: “The world is loud with reasons to turn away from one another. I wanted to make a quiet work. Not a protest, not a commentary, but a space where strangers can sit together and remember that this, too, is real.” Oikeiōsis (pronounced ee-kee-o-sis) offers a bold and timely reimagining of ancient philosophy through a distinctly contemporary lens. Unfolding as a two-room, multisensory passage that merges warmth, sound, visuals, and tactile encounter, the exhibition challenges the illusion that we are separate. Drawing on Stoic ethics and pre-Socratic cosmology, Vagioni reminds us of what the ancients knew: that we belong to one another and that our deepest nature is shared. The artist, who is also a classically trained singer and composer, transforms the visitor from a passive observer into a participant. Her approach is both scholarly and intuitive, drawing from ancient wisdom, traditions, music, and scenography to create a fluid artistic language. In focusing on elemental materials, such as sound, light, reflections and salt, she resists the urge to offer spectacle or didactic resolution. Instead, she implicates the visitor in a process of co-presence.  In the first room, called Neikos, the ancient Greek word for strife or divisiveness, a cube of polygonal plexiglass reflects visitors in fragmented, multiplied form, confronting them with the geometry of separation. In the second room, six warm rock-salt seats surround a hexagonal structure embedded with mirrors. When someone sits, sound and light respond to their presence: a layered vocal soundscape, incorporating the artist’s own soprano voice, evokes the Orphic declaration “I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven.” Separation dissolves. Kinship becomes tangible.

Study for Philotes II (2026) by Pavlina Vagioni, soft pastels on Sennelier paper, 30 x 24 cm

The artist has composed a soundscape for the second room of Philotes, an ancient Greek word referring to the power of bringing harmony to separate elements. She uses her own voice, humming, heartbeats and other sounds in a minor chord that gradually start from low to high. The sound will follow the visuals, slowly building up from low frequency to high, to create a minor extended chord, similar to those found in jazz, Ravel and Debussy. When visitors are gathered together in the space, each activating the soundscape as they sit, she aims to create the “Tartini effect”: when two frequencies heard together create a phantom third that exists only as resonance.  Named for the Venetian baroque violinist Giuseppe Tartini, who first reported it, this psychoacoustic phenomenon is an auditory illusion where an additional tone is perceived when only two real tones are sounded.  Vagioni comments:  There is a sound in music that no single voice can produce. Musicians know this. When voices converge, something else appears, a resonance that belongs to none of them and to all. You cannot will it into being. You can only create the conditions and listen. In a Biennale composed in the minor keys, this is the frequency I wanted to tune to: not a sound, but what the sound reveals. We carry a luminous knowing that precedes language. It is always there. It only needs a moment to surface.

Salt seats from the work Philotes by Pavlina Vagioni

Vagioni's practice is devoted to restoring the numinous in daily life, beginning each project with etymological excavation of primary sources to unearth what the very word mythology conceals within itself: myo (to conceal) and logos (to reveal). What emerges are environments where visitors do not contemplate myth but physically undergo it. Her work moves fluidly across mediums, rooted in an alchemical process that transforms archetypes such as Medusa, Proteus, and the Sirens into agents of healing. With Oikeiōsis, presented during the Venice Biennale, Vagioni brings this practice to its most visible platform yet. The magic we have forgotten returns. We remember how to belong. Curator Dr Laura Augusta comments: In alchemy, salt is the principle of memory, materialized. For this new installation, Pavlina Vagioni thinks about the tangible ways in which we are connected. Here, a group of salt seats will change shape over the course of the exhibition, holding the record of physical touch, their own memory of the visitors who pause for respite. If we imagine kinship as a kind of embrace, of shared space and gathering, of song, we might describe our entanglements with others as a series of overlapping, embracing circles, gently widening out from the self, to the beloved, to the known, to the unfamiliar. In a moment of extraordinary fragmentation, the artist understands the fundamental tenets of our social responsibility to be empathy, closeness, and warmth, even before information. And perhaps that is our most primordial memory: the feeling of being cradled in co-presence.

Exhibition Information Pavlina Vagioni: OIKEIŌSIS Wednesday 6 May-Sunday 25 October 2026 Spazio Tana 2127/A, Venice (near the entrance of the Arsenale) Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 11am-7pm About artist Pavlina Vagioni Pavlina Vagioni  (b. 1975, Athens, Greece) is a Houston- and Athens-based interdisciplinary artist who stages encounters between classical mythology and contemporary life. Moving fluidly between sculpture, painting, sound, mixed media, and digital art, she adopts a site-specific approach to making work, with multisensory installations presented in a range of sizes that embrace abstract and figurative elements. Solo exhibitions include The Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis [IN], The Opening Gallery [New York, NY], Carillon Gallery (Fort Worth, TX), TANK Space (Houston, TX), and Kappatos Gallery (Athens, Greece). Group shows have been held at the Byzantine Museum, the Hellenic American Union, and the City of Athens Arts Center. Public art commissions include a large-scale installation of over 2,000 suspended laser-cut acrylic elements for Houston's ION Building. The artist’s commitment to utilizing new materials and fabrication technologies in her practice has been supported by a workshop scholarship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and a residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work is included in the permanent collection of MOMus–Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has been recognized with the Juror's Award from the Lawndale Art Center in Houston. Vagioni studied painting, sculpture, and scenography at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece, graduating with honors at the master's level in 2016. Over a decade of training as a classical soprano soloist, alongside studies in piano, music theory, and composition, provides an interdisciplinary foundation that continues to inform her practice.  About curator Dr Laura Augusta Laura Augusta, PhD, is the Jane Dale Owen Director & Chief Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Her recent exhibitions include Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue (2024-2026), Presentiments (2024), Adán Vallecillo: Tiempo Libre (2024), Proving the Hypothesis of Celestial Flirtation: Christin Apodaca (2023-2024), Jessica Kairé: Levantamiento (2023), Laura Turón: Immersive Abstractions (2023), Here, And the Wind (2023), Sam Reveles: Solastalgia (2022), On Porous Edges & Radical Decay (2021, online), Touch Over Fear (2021, online), Stone’s Throw: Arte de Sanación, Arte de Resistencia (2020), To Weave Blue: Poema al Tejido (2020), and To Look at the Sea is to Become What One Is (2019), among others. Her work has been awarded Fellowships from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Core Critical Studies Program at the MFAH, and Yale University, among others, and her essays have been widely published internationally, in English and Spanish. She has actively published arts criticism in Texas since 2005. From 2016-2020, Laura ran a domestic project space, Yvonne, in her apartment in downtown Guatemala City. Laura’s curatorial/essay projects connect the landscapes of disaster-prone places, thinking specifically about storms and muddiness, shared space, and everyday forms of embodied ongoingness. About the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation has become the world's largest non-profit institution dedicated to preserving, researching, and promoting the creative legacy of Greek visual artists of the diaspora. Located in Patras, Greece, the Foundation has built an unparalleled collection of works by seminal artists, including Takis, Jannis Kounellis, Chryssa, Peter Voulkos, Lucas Samaras, and Theodoros Stamos, and has established itself as a vital bridge between Greek artistic heritage and the contemporary global art scene. What sets the Foundation apart is the rigour of its archival mission, documenting not just the art but the stories, voices, and journeys of Greek artists across the global diaspora, establishing it as an increasingly ambitious voice in international contemporary art. Established in 2016, and headquartered in Patras, Greece, the Foundation occupies a complex of three buildings and a sculpture garden with a total surface area of 2500 sq.m. Designed to accommodate both cultural preservation and scholarly engagement, the premises house museum‑standard galleries that present an extensive collection of paintings, sculptures, installations, and archival materials. Selected works from its collection have been featured in exhibitions at leading public and private Greek art institutions. In addition to its exhibition programme and its permanent collection, The Hellenic Diaspora Foundation has produced 14 biographical documentaries dedicated to artists of the Greek diaspora; it has published 5 exhibition catalogues and monographs of artists; it has produced and archived 48 interviews and exhibition recordings; it has commissioned 13 art historical and theoretical texts; and it has organised 13 educational initiatives.   Exhibition Project Management by Hekate Studios, Athens, London, and Milan. CS Art Management