“In a Bright Green Field”: An exhibition of works by 29 emerging artists transforms the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138 into a luminous, verdant meadow

By Stelios Parris

A seed exploring their relationship with the natural landscape, blossoming into creations that delight the eye.

The exhibition In a Bright Green Field transforms the Benaki Museum’s Pireos 138 space into a luminous, lush green meadow where youth and freedom bloom side by side. Acting as both curator and “gardener,” Gary Carrion-Murayari from the New Museum, together with the DESTE Foundation and the Benaki Museum, has sown the seeds of this vibrant project.

Don’t expect a literal installation about farming, though. This is a contemporary art exhibition in every sense of the word, featuring 29 artists from the new generation – the youngest born in 1998, the oldest in 1983.

Under the curation of Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum, In a Bright Green Field showcases the richness of contemporary Greek artistic creation. It plants a “seed” exploring the artists’ relationship with the natural landscape, blossoming into works that delight the eye. The materials are as diverse as the ideas: acrylic inks, oils, and oil pastels on canvas by David Sabetai; aluminum, iron, a lamp, a fan, electrical cables, and a t-shirt by Raïssa Angeli; fiberglass molds by Theodoulos Polyviou; a handwoven tapestry by Latent Community; bronze sculptures by Maria Toumazou; a handmade honeycomb by Maria Louizou; and phone cards by Danae Io. It’s a true garden of artistic abundance.

Among the works that stand out, Byron Kalomama’s interactive installation If you want to know about change, first look at the rivers (2025) invites you to literally open its taps, play with its valves, and control the flow. Crafted from aluminum, resin, acrylic, distilled water, and stainless steel, it connects movement and transformation in a tangible way.

Another piece that captivates is Sophia Rozaki’s all that and a slice of pie (2022–24), a mixed-media textile work consisting of six women’s garments designed to be worn during performance, interacting with both body and space – much like the elegant handmade honeycomb shirts by Maria Louizou.

Each work dominates its own corner for its own reasons, but for me, Polina Miliou’s standard shuffle shrine (2025) is particularly striking – made of papier-mâché, salvaged wooden furniture parts, found objects, and polystyrene foam, it combines symmetry and soft curves in stone-like tones that quietly draw you in.

The exhibition even includes an experimental documentary by Vera Chotzoglou, the place to be (2023–ongoing), featuring “souvenir” objects like stun grenades, bridging memory, conflict, and identity.

In a Bright Green Field ultimately presents contemporary artistic creation as a way of constructing a new image of the future – one that doesn’t yet exist but insists on demanding better. Visiting the exhibition, you feel as though you’re no longer walking on the wooden floors of the Benaki Museum, nor even through a shimmering green meadow, but on something fluid, uncharted – the very landscape of a new generation leading us toward unexpected paths.

Whether it’s Danae Io’s kinetic phone cards, Kyriakos “Bobby” Kyriakidis’ all the stuff Kenny chicken (2025), with its hidden digital prints and Polaroid memories, or something entirely different, you’ll find the work that speaks to you. After all, art is for everyone – and it whispers differently to each of us.