Haus N Athen

30/07/2026

We Kept On Dressing
Amalia Vekri and Dardan Zhegrova

Dardan Zhegrova

Extract from the text by Arnisa Zeqo Arnisa Zeqo

“My first visual exposure to p**nographic imagery came from antiquity. More specifically from visits to the sites of Pompei where I spent some time as a young person. There were the ‘forbidden spaces’ the Thermea and also the more accessible Casa dei Misteri. The thermae or public baths in Pompei are not too far from the gay saunas Michel Foucault writes about. For reasons often debated by archeologists and scholars, this building includes a room with depiction of s*x work, one of the earliest example of po*******hy, or the writing about s*x workers as the etymology of the word implies. The characters alternate between nudity and clothed moments. There’s a naked woman receiving cu*******us by a dressed man, or a party of three in action. They are funny and crude and depicting quick moments of exchange. Visiting these frescos was an exiting experience, even without knowing what each vignette fully depicted at the time. The acts are immediate, there to be seen and captured quickly. They remain in my mind as blurs of forbidden excitement and curiosity.
Immersed in the red color of the walls the images of the Casa dei Misteri work as a revelation of something one does not know but anticipates. As I raw and move my arms
and legs, the images from this place recall a different experience, one of presentiment and mystery. The bodies alternate between clothed and naked. In the first scene a young naked boy (Dionysos) is reading something surrounded by three women. In another a woman is preparing for a bath, water pouring on her right side. Another woman is breastfeeding a goat, one Brest clothed, the other naked. A character is engaged in a divinatory practice with a mirror and an a winged creature is presenting a large stoned fallus. Then there is a flagellation, a slender half clothed female body kneeled and helped by her girlfriend awaits for a whipping by a third woman, while a fourth naked woman dances and plays music.”

📸 Nikos Katsaros

23/07/2026

We Kept On Dressing by Amalia Vekri and Dardan Zhegrova is on view through the end of the month ✨

Amalia Vekri Girls at Home series, 2025, watercolour, various inks on paper, 42x29,7cm

Extract from the text by Arnisa Zeqo

“Girls at Home by Vekri brings to mind the watercolours of Marie Laurencin but the pastel shades of violet, blue and pink are taken by greens and blues and a melancholic atmosphere. Solitary female bodies lie in interior settings, in poses that range from sitting down with a drink to what might feel like a slightly uncomfortable position. They seem at ease, light like a feather. The colour saturation of the water-colours and the atmosphere they imply is inspired by cinematographic realities laden by desire, occult practices and unresolved intergeneration trauma such as Suspiria by Dario Argento or Requiem for a
Vampire by Jean Rollin. The scenes themselves come from online p**n clips, specifically the moments before or after ‘the main act’ has taken place or is about to happen.”

Dardan Zhegrova Arnisa Zeqo

📸 Nikos Katsaros

15/07/2026

We Kept On Dressing is extended through the end of July and open by appointment ✨

Dardan Zhegrova, Orgiastic Rites series, 2026, oil pastels on paper

Extract form the text by Arnisa Zeqo

“The series of Orgiastic Rites by Dardan Zhregova is directly referencing Dionysus, the pagan god of frenzy, wine and altered states. The drawings exist in a crossed dimension of a heroic mythical pagan attributes and contemporary gay p**n aesthetics. In one drawing a violet bodied person with blonde hair stands on top of another lying body in a pose that can recall Achilles and Patroclus. On a closer look what might be an embrace is also engagement in a s*xual act. In reality many of the drawings are directly sourced from contemporary casual s*xual meetings with anonymous men facilitated by popular sites such as Grindr. They switch from rituals to raw empty encounters. These quick hook ups with one or multiple men exist in a space where reality and the expectations
of a short p**n clip are blurred. “A Hybrid between desire and reality’ Dardan says.”

Dardan Zhegrova Amalia Vekri Arnisa Zeqo

02/07/2026

Collaborative work by Amalia Vekri & Dardan Zhegrova in the exhibition We Kept On Dressing.

Untitled, 2026, acrylic, ink, watercolour, coffee, marker pen on fabric, 25 m x 150 cm

Extract from Arnisa Zeqo’s text Arnisa Zeqo

“The drapery between and within bodies in Pompei, like a metaphysical skin creates an entry into a different dimension. It functions like a connecting tissue, a narrative where acts and desire are playing a game of hide and seek. These elements of drapery are what binds the drawings and watercolours together in the exhibition ‘We kept on Dressing’. There is the evocation of the actual location, an old pyjama manufacturer, a place for cozy dreams. The installation created with found older fabric from the 1970s brings to life parallel dimensions of s*x work and the changes on s*xual imagination. It is like a skin surface where everything is slippery and everything suface. In the drawings of Dardan, the watercolours of Amalia, the fabric and in my own mental images different techniques of the body are laid bare to be hidden and seen. Like in rowing, and the clothing used in the gym, the music perpetrating my ear, the techniques of the body within s*xual consumption are entangled on many layers of expectation, practice and imagination. How can desire and intimacy be drawn, be present alongside the changing trends of quick
consumption? Could perhaps the very lack of meaning, the immediate mediation of ‘scenes’ be a lens for opening up how the techniques of the body relate to affect and emotion? Could this be a sort of revelation, like in a feverish dream?”

Amalia Vekri Dardan Zhegrova

24/06/2026

We Kept On Dressing
Amalia Vekri & Dardan Zhegrova is on view by appointment

Text by Arnisa Zeqo

“Few weeks ago I spoke with Amalia and Dardan about their exhibition We Kept on Dressing taking place in an old pyjama manufactory in Athens showing Vekri’s series Girls
At Home and Zhegrova’s Series of Orgiastic Rites. We spoke about how the two of them met during a common residency in Tirana at the old house of the leader of the post war Albanian communist party and dictator Enver Hoxha that since a few years has been transformed into a place for contemporary art. In this elegant and haunted villa in the centre of the ever changing city of Tirana the two artists connected with each other’s work through their common artistic preoccupation with how intimacy and desire are woven with absence and emptiness. Like in a game of hide and seek.”

Amalia Vekri Dardan Zhegrova Arnisa Zeqo

📸

08/06/2026

OPENING 12 July 7-10pm
WE KEPT ON DRESSING
Amalia Vekri & Dardan Zhegrova

The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Arnisa Zeqo

We Kept on Dressing brings together the practises of Amalia Vekri (Greece) and Dardan Zhegrova (Kosovo) exploring themes that circle the body - its staging, its hunger, and its vulnerability.

The exhibition presents two drawing series in dialogue. Vekri’s Girls at Home, sourced from online p**nographic archives, captures female figures mid-pose, suspended in the moment before or after s*x. Zhegrova’s work moves through gay male eroticism with similar attention to what bodies do when they stop posing and they simply exist.

Together, the artists will create a fabric installation throughout the space, a gesture that echoes the space’s own history as a pyjama manufacturer, and reflects on the slow disappearance of the textile trade from the surrounding district.

The exhibition opens with a shared performance in which Vekri and Zhegrova read from their own texts - fictional and otherwise - on yearning and its aftermath.Here, the simple act of dressing becomes a metaphor for trying to contain desire.

06/05/2026

02/05/2026

Collecting Friends through May 7 open by appointment

Featured Artists: John Baldessari, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Sana Helena Berger, Arno Bojak, Thorsten Brinkmann, Dante Buu, Ciccio, Billy Childish, Anne-Lise Coste, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Sophia Domagala, Ekene Stanley Emecheta, Caroline von Grone, Carsten Hoeller, Florian Huber, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Christian Jankowski, Sven Johne, Thomas Judisch, Alicja Kwade, Matti Kujasalo, Hannah Lim, Alexej Meschtschanow, Stefan Mueller, Sandra Mujinga, Nathan Peter, Michail Pirgelis, Edi Rama, Mia Scarpa, Michael E. Smith, Juergen Staack, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Amalia Vekri, Lu Yang

Borrowed from the collections: Sammlung Graefling, Sammlung Oehmen, Gina Quan, Anastasia Sgoumpopoulou, Miettinen Collection, Karsten Kretzschmar-Kevin Traugott, Majerus Collection, Servais Family Collection, Sû Collection, Anke und Frank Delenschke, Sammlung Peters-Messer, Bech Risvig Collection, Jochen Huesgen-Sylvia Alster, Herbert Gerisch Stiftung, SteDi Stiftung, Lazimbat-Ehle Collection, Sammlung Haus N

Curated by

27/04/2026

Collecting Friends is on view through May 7. You can visit by appointment

23/04/2026

Opening tomorrow! ✨organised by Peter Niemann