Manolis Baboussis

was born in Athens in 1950. He studied Architecture at the University of Florence from 1968-1975 under the mentorship of A. Natalini, a founding member of the Superstudio Collective, during the burgeoning of the radical architecture movement. In 1976, he participated in the restoration program of UNESCO’s International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in Rome. His work as an architect includes projects for the Organization of School Buildings S.A. (OSK).

Since 1973, his work encompasses photography, both in printed form and video projection, drawing, and installation.

In October 2022 he exhibited his work in the 2300 sqm of the Nikos Kessanlis Hall of the Athens School of Fine Arts, A.S.K.T.See exhibition catalogue , See exhibihion video

In 2003, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) hosted his first pho tography exhibition with the retrospective Manolis Baboussis 1973-2003.

Baboussis’s work critically engages environmental catastrophe, longstanding trauma and attendant melancholy, a global and virtual economy, organisations and institutions, including that of art

Through the photographic images, drawings, poetry and his installations, he comments on social politics, the status of the visual arts, and their jargons, using an ironic, often caustic tone, and proposing a new utopian dailiness as an alternative. See texts

From 1994-2017, he was a constant companion and close friend and collaborator of the late Jannis Kounellis, to whose work he contributed insights based on his personal visual interpretations.

Baboussis has made major contributions to the understanding of the role of photography in contemporary art in Greece. In 1999, he founded the Photographic Studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), while teaching courses in its graduate pro- gram of “Digital Arts” and the roots and paths of Photography in Contemporary Art.

In 2011, as Vice Rector and architect, he researched, designed, organized, and over- saw the conversion of the ASFA parking lot into a garden. In 2013, he resigned from the position of Vice Rector (2010-2013) and tenured professor of ASFA in protest over the fact that photography was not instituted as one of the school’s major courses of study. Link here

Manolis Baboussis work has been exhib- ited in many solo and group shows, and is included in many important public and personal collections. Link here

Many of his monographs, notebooks, and poetry collections have appeared in print. Publishers include: Exantas, Bastas, Ples- sas, Futura, Smilis, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Benaki Museum, Camec, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, etc Link here