AFI in the Round

It is an artistic intervention by the artists of the group AFI. The artwork consists of eight columns that created a circle following the form of a mosque using materials chosen by each artist.

The AFI group was active from 1979 and throughout the 1980s, and was stimulated by the intense desire of the time for collective work and action. In the house situated on Tripodon Street in Plaka, the AFI art craft group organized exhibitions, both of its own members and of artists who were close to the group's point of view, namely the approach to artwork that comes close to the meaning of the piece being utilitarian without being a design.

The artists Maria Grigoriou, Inger Carlsson, Judith Allen-Efstathiou, Corinna Coutouzi, Despina Pantazopoulou, Yiannis Papadopoulos, Eva Chiladaki and Theodora Chorafas continue to create in the true spirit of artistic craftsmanship. The Rethymno Centre for Contemporary Art (today’s Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete) invited the artists to prepare a new in situ artwork at the Ibrahim Khan Mosque celebrating the differences that unite them and the long history of the AFI group.

The exhibition was organised by the Rethymno Centre for Contemporary Art and was held from 17 May 2002 until the works began to deteriorate in the covered and open areas of the mosque.

The exhibition was complemented by a bilingual catalogue containing texts by Maria Marangou, Nikos Xydakis and the artists themselves.