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Antonis Pittas

Antonis Pittas (1973, Athens) is a visual artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. In 2021 he was an honorary fellow in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam, where he conducted research and produced work under the heading Recycling History (Contemporising History/Historicising the Contemporary). His artistic practice focuses on contemporary social and political issues, exploring topics such as safety and control, economic crises, acts of resistance, violence, and vandalism.

scene
silkscreen, reflective foil, aluminum, 2021

scene
silkscreen, reflective foil, aluminum, 2021


While artist Antonis Pittas was staying at the Van Doesburg House in the suburbs of Paris in 2019, the French capital’s streets were filled with “yellow vests” (or gilets jaunes, in French), large groups of people who were protesting gas and petrol price increases, the general disparate circumstances they experienced, and the social disparity that was growing in France between the center and the peripheries. Sometimes these groups took a rather “populist” stance. Consequently, Pittas’s research focus shifted — from the modernist ideas informing the house that Van Doesburg had built in 1930 to the contemporary political unrest outside. Pittas followed along with the demonstrations and photographed their presence in public space. Scene captures the result of destruction and violence between the police and demonstrators, on one of Paris’s best-known and most prestigious streets, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. The viewer is invited to reactivate this moment, by taking a photo of the silkscreen using a flash. By doing so, the viewer becomes a witness to the scene.
Courtesy of the artist and of the Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.