From July 9 to September 14, the Elitis House-Museum in Plaka becomes home to a curious and poetic gathering: Paper Playthings, an installation by scenographer Apostolos F. Vettas.
Inside the quiet neoclassical space, creatures of folded paper begin to emerge. Musicians, jesters, stilt-walkers, dancers, acrobats, even witches—delicate, handmade figures caught mid-motion—seem to drift toward a piano. They’re not just sculptures but characters from a silent pageant, a weightless theatre made of paper and air.
Vettas, who has long moved between the worlds of architecture and scenography, describes his installation as a “mute scene with festive floats,” filled with imaginary beings and quiet rhythms. The paper he uses—creased, bent, shaped with care—becomes something animate. Though still, each figure seems ready to leap into movement, to speak without words.
Poet Ioulita Iliopoulou sees them as dream material: “An entire troupe of fantastic beings made from the substance of paper—or perhaps the substance of dreams.” These beings, she suggests, are on a journey toward something just out of reach: the mythic, many-voiced piano at the center of their silent orbit.
Vettas’s work often blurs boundaries: between stage and gallery, structure and poetry, object and story. Born in Athens in 1945, he studied architecture in Thessaloniki and Edinburgh before devoting much of his life to scenography. His theatrical designs have appeared at festivals in Epidaurus, Athens, and beyond, and he has shaped generations of students through his long teaching career at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
But Paper Playthings doesn’t speak through credentials. It speaks through its fragility. Through the suggestion of movement. Through the way light touches the paper. It’s a world where children’s toys and theatrical archetypes meet, where folded creatures remind us that imagination is never still.
On opening night, artist Angelos Papadimitriou will offer thoughts on the installation—a fitting gesture, as this paper theatre feels more like an ongoing conversation than a finished work.
The exhibition is open Fridays through Sundays, from 10:30 to 18:00.
More info: elytishousemuseum.gr
