South by Southeast at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens presents a new curatorial direction that reframes Greece as a central node between Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa, through recent acquisitions, donations, and works from the permanent collection
South by Southeast marks a key moment in the evolution of the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art EMΣT Athens and its institutional orientation. The exhibition draws on recent acquisitions and donations alongside existing works, reflecting a collection policy introduced in 2021 that moves beyond established Western European canons.
The project positions Greece within a broader Mediterranean and south eastern European cultural geography that extends through the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa. It presents the country not as a peripheral space in relation to Western Europe but as a central point of intersection shaped by long histories of movement, exchange, conflict, multilingualism, and layered identities. The exhibition brings together fifty artists from more than twenty countries.
The title references Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest, reworked as South by Southeast to signal a deliberate cultural and geographical reorientation. It challenges dominant Anglo Saxon and Western European frameworks that have shaped Greek modernity since independence and instead proposes a more complex map of cultural relations. In this reading Greece is understood through its historical and geographical proximity to the Levant and its position at the crossroads of continents and belief systems.
The exhibition also reflects broader contemporary shifts often described as a turn east in Greece, connected to renewed cultural, political, and economic relationships with neighbouring regions. Within this framework the collection is understood as necessarily partial, shaped by selection, focus, and gaps. Its strength lies not in total coverage but in coherence and the ability to construct meaningful connections across regions and histories.
South by Southeast is therefore presented not only as an exhibition of acquisitions but as a curatorial proposition about the future role of cultural institutions in a multipolar world. It invites a reconsideration of Greece’s historical and geopolitical positioning and suggests the south eastern orientation as a framework for renewed cosmopolitan thinking. The curatorial approach is led by Katerina Gregos.
