25 February - 25 April 2026
The Demos Center of The American College of Greece, Athens
Not Third but Infinite takes its title and conceptual framework from critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of the “Third Space,” expanding his idea of a hybrid, imagined zone between cultures into a vision of infinite re-creation. This expansion evokes the psychological potency of utopia—a state defined by perpetual openness and possibility. Notably, the exhibition includes previously unexhibited notebooks and ephemera from the personal archive of the distinguished Greek-American artist Michael Lekakis (1907–1987). Lekakis’s work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Guggenheim, and is held in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Greece.
Featuring both established and posthumous artists alongside those at earlier stages of their careers, the exhibition presents poetry, painting, embroidery, works on paper, archival ephemera, and immersive installations. It collectively reflects on what it means not only to leave one’s roots behind, but also to continuously renegotiate versions of the self. These recalibrated identities are often constructed from visual fragments, memories, and sensory impressions tied to specific landscapes and physical touchpoints, which reassemble in unfamiliar yet generative ways.
Of Korean-American origin and raised between Switzerland and Greece, multidisciplinary artist Iliodora Margellos brings her meditative stitch-based practice to her series Securities, presenting embroidered aphorisms such as A Star Is Brighter in the Clear Sky and The Sun Will Always Rise as gestures of reassurance for the untethered self. She also presents two lesser-known installations: a floor-based crochet and mirror sculpture of droplets and puddles, titled Long Quiet River—named after Étienne Chatiliez’s French comedy film “La Vie est un Long Fleuve Tranquille”—and a delicate handwoven mobile, Comforts (Very Knotty) IV, anchored by a textile knot that gestures toward entanglement and the quiet inner harmony one learns to cultivate within the layered complexities of familial identity.
