The first fully accessible exhibition for people with disabilities in Greece opens on June 24, in the periodical exhibition hall of the Epigraphic Museum, with works of engraving by Panagiotis Pristouris.
Entitled “The line’s course”, 21 representative engravings from the four stations of the artist’s route are presented, as well as three impressive copies of inscriptions from the rich collection of the Epigraphic Museum.
One of the innovations of the exhibition “is the design of a sensory map for people who are on the autism spectrum, as well as the constant presence of an interpreter in Greek Sign Language and an escort for people with visual disabilities”, inform the organizers – MYARTIST (Social Cooperative Enterprise), in collaboration with the Epigraphic Museum, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture.
Other important adjustments to make the exhibition accessible to every person at the same time are that “each work is accompanied by an interpretation through QR codes in Greek Sign Language and International Sign, while there is also an audio description of it by the artist himself. The title, technical characteristics and date of creation of each work will also be printed in Braille.
Gaita
The reference point of the exhibition is the tactile engraving work “Gaita”, suitable, through special lighting, for people with visual disabilities. Also, for the work entitled “Kleisova”, the visitor will be able to see all the stages of its creation, from the engraving to the final print.”
The 21 engravings by Panagiotis Pristouris presented in the exhibition have been selected with the contribution of Afroditis Oikonomidou, Marina Georgopoulos, Liba Berzina, Alexandros Panagiotopoulos and Kyras Papanikolaou. Each curator worked on a specific period of the artist’s visual production, analyzing and evaluating the various phases of his artistic development and maturation.
Short biography of the artist
Panagiotis Pristouris was born in Messina. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina majoring in Painting. From the first moment, engraving and the field of printmaking piqued his interest. He experimented and combined modern with traditional printing and engraving techniques. In 2020, he chose to implement the business idea concerning the convergence of art and cultural accessibility through the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program in the Italian-Greek cultural organization for education “Microkosmos”. Since September 2020, he has been working as a deputy professor of Visual Arts in Secondary Education, while at the same time he is an active member of the Union of Greek Engravers, as well as the Greek Chamber of Fine Arts. He is active both in Greece and abroad with individual and participatory exhibitions.
For him, the art of engraving is a creative outlet, where vision and observation change, transform and express themselves on the engraving surface in a completely different way than the usual visual perception we have of our surroundings. Each work tells its own story and at the same time is an emotional portrait of him.