NEA ZOI

Nea Zoi is an Augmented Reality experience commissioned by OUTSET for the exhibition Seeing the Invisible and experienced at the National Gardens of Athens in 2023.

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What if a ghetto next to a dumpsite was a fruitful papier-mâché garden designed by 7 years old Romani kids? A group of Romani children who live in Nea Zoi, a marginal community in Aspropyrgos, Western Athens, were asked how they would dream their neighborhood to look like. A dystopic world, made out of visual and auditory elements that pollute their everyday landscape, transforms into a green U- topia, a non-place inspired by elements drawn by the children. The work stretches the urgency to hear these supressed voices and to bring them to the center of the city, proposing that the traumatizing "Real"; can be re- viewed through the "Imaginary", and that the invisible can become visible.

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(Organized by Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, curated by Hadas Maor and Tal Michael Haring. Participating artists were: Loukia Alavanou, Refik Anadol, El Anatsui, Ori Gersht, Isaac Julien CBE RA, Mohammed Kazem, Sigalit Landau, Daito Manabe, Sarah Meyohas, Mel O’Callaghan, Pamela Rosenkranz, Timur Si- Qin, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Ai Weiwei)