Wednesday, March 28, 2007

the call

Title: “Refugee Solidarity Chain”
Call for mail art

We call on the artists of the world to participate with their work in the mail art project “Refugee Solidarity Chain”.

Help us raise awareness on the needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Greece. Be a ring in the Refugee Solidarity Chain with your work and help us raise funds to support these people!
Refugee is “a person who due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country[1]”.
Refugees are not immigrants who, legally or not, leave their countries voluntarily in order to improve their standard of living. Refugees arrive in Greece in a state of desperation, often abandoning their families in order to escape the danger and having lived through traumatic experiences, having seen family members, friends, and co-workers imprisoned or even executed.
Moreover, they deal with very serious survival problems, because they are deprived of funds, familial and social ties, and communication due to linguistic and cultural differences.
The support of these people is the main idea behind this project, organized by the Greek Council for Refugees (http://www.gcr.gr/ ), a Non Governmental Organization founded in 1989 to provide legal and psychosocial aid to refugees and asylum seekers who live in Greece. The Union of past refugees from “Black Sea- Pontus” of Elassona responded to the Council’s call for help, with the sensitivity and awareness of what really means to be a refugee, as they also were refugees some years ago.
Please send us your work with:
Dimensions: 10 x 15, A5, A4
Material: painting, engraving, digital art, artistic photo.
No returns, no fees.
All work be exposed, in Art Gallery in Athens
Doc. to all
Deadline: 30 October 2007
All works must be sent to:
Dr. Karipidis Giannis
6 Oktovriou 113
40200 Elassona – Greece
E-mail: kaelde@yahoo.gr

The painter & mail artist Thomai Kontou is the art director and curator of this project.
E-mail: uxa53@yahoo.gr
thomaikontou@gmail.gr

Web Exhibition: http://mailart-greece-refugees.blogspot.com/

There will be an exhibition of all the art works, and all funds raised by the sales will be donated to GCR, for support to the refugees who live in Greece.
You will receive more detailed information about the date and the place of the exhibition in the coming weeks.

For the support of Exhibition was created an artistic committee from Greeks mail artists:
Thomai Kontou
Ioanna Papachristou
Galatos Stavros
Anna Filini
Regas Makropoulos
Efi Bizou Chlorokosta
Aristotelis Triantis
Helen Baziotou
Thomas Liolios
Nikos Delis
Christos Papanikolaou
Gioula Gathi
Kostas Varnas
Vasilis Prappas
Kostas Evaggelatos
Nikos Kelesis
International honorary artistic committee
Adamandia Kapsalis - U.S.A
Anna Boschi - Italy
Clemente Padin- Uruguay
Dale Roberts – Canada
Denis Charmot – France
Ivan Zemtsov - Russia
Mick Boyle – U.S.A.
Mim. Grammatikopoulos - Greece
Puneet Gupta – India
Paul Tiilila – Finland
Ryosuke Cohen -Japan
Sidney Tome -Brazil
Suzzlee Ibrahim – Malaysia
Tiziana Baracchi- Italy


Greek Council for Refugees
http://www.gcr.gr/default.asp?pid=1&la=2
http://www.gcr.gr/default.asp?pid=1&la=1
Leto Marinou
E-mail: fundraiser@gcr.gr
Tel: 0030 210 3320053

[1] This definition was adopted internationally on July 28th 1951 and was put in writing in the treaty since known as the Convention of Geneva “relating to the refugee status”. The convention was amended with the New York protocol of July 31st 1967 and ever since is enforced intact.