RE-COIL | OpenArtLink 2025 Piraeus
“Recoil” signifies not only retreat or withdrawal, but also the elastic return that follows. While the word is usually associated with guns and other military equipment, we challenge a different reading: from a feminist perspective, it embodies an ambivalent motion — being pushed back by social power structures while simultaneously transforming that displacement into renewed strength. Here, retreat is not perceived as weakness, but as resilience — a moment of gathering force, building tension, and opening new possibilities.
Read as “re-coil,” the word also evokes the act of coiling again – as a deliberate act of intertwining and redirecting forces. This gesture is not merely mechanical but deeply affective: the slow re- coiling of a string that has loosened is an act of patience and care, of re-evaluation and re- ordering. It sets things in place so that a new beginning can unfold. Re-coiling is not just preparation work but an integral part of any renewal, a quiet insistence that beginnings are always built on the labor of tending and gathering. Picking up threads, loosening knots, and tying new connections creates a feminist space of action in which vulnerability and resistance are inseparably interwoven.
In the port of Piraeus this reading finds a concrete echo: ropes that hold weight snap back when they break; currents pull, boats give way and return. The harbor is a place traditionally associated with male-coded labor and global circulation – and amidst ropes, rust, and concrete walls, “Re-coil” negotiates both patriarchal backlash and resistant rebound: withdrawal becomes counterforce. Austrian and Greek artists working in painting, textiles, and performance present existing works while also developing a joint installation on site. This installation will be activated through performance, embodying “Recoil” not only as a narrative but as lived practice – a poetics of tension, care, and renewed, self-determined orientation.
Curated by: Marlene Heidinger
Artists: Marilena Georgantzi, Marlene Heidinger, Daphnis Monastiriotis, Eirini Tiniakou.
The exhibition is presented at OpenArtLink 2025 | Piraeus Project, an initiative organised by CHEAPART and keramikos_23, aimed to unite international artists from diverse disciplines to explore innovation and creative exchange.
OpenArtLink 2025
Piraeus-Project
Athinon 8-12, 185 40, Piraeus 185 40
22 - 26 October, 2025
Opening: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Organised by: CHEAPART, keramikos_23
Georg Georgakopoulos, Paolo Incarnato, Fotini Kapiris, Thalia Kerouli
https://www.openartlink.com
