annex M: Jenny Marketou – Folly for Songs for Funk Kinships

ANNEX M Jenny Marketou

As part of the visual arts programme of annexM, under the direction of Anna Kafetsi, and following the commission of a new site-specific work for the Megaron Garden by artist Jenny Marketou, the project Folly for Songs for Funk Kinship is presented, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

With this work, the artist proposes a sculptural environment attuned to relations of care, materiality, and coexistence between human and non-human organisms.

 

 

AnnexM presents the new work by visual artist Jenny Marketou, Folly for Songs for Funk Kinships, a site-specific installation designed for the Garden of Megaron the Athens Concert Hall. The work unfolds in situ, with the Garden itself functioning as an artistic studio, where materialities, seasonal transformations, and existing life forms organically contribute to the creative process.

The installation develops from summer through spring, as a refuge for wild kinships and sonic synchronizations, following the shifting rhythms of the seasons and vegetation. Its architecture takes a playful, ironic stance toward conventional notions of functionality or decoration, claiming a space where form does not obey codes of utility but negotiates terms of shared living. The broken circle that defines its structure—an open form allowing free access and circular flow—is composed of clay components, bricks made of natural materials, wood, and organic traces. These structures provide habitat for birds, insects, small animals, plant organisms, and other life forms.

In Folly for Songs for Funk Kinships, the human presence withdraws from the center and participates on equal terms in a multiple community. The work is inscribed into the Garden while simultaneously creating the framework for the emergence of a new ecosystem of relations: a meeting ground between the animate and the inanimate, where the very concepts of life, matter, and care are reformulated. The material structures remain open to decay and transformation, adapting to the subtle shifts of the environment. The materialities activate sensory experiences while also serving as a practical ground for the development of relations, composing a field of encounters that resists predetermined hierarchies.

The work was realized in collaboration with the social cooperative Cob, embracing practices of natural building and bioclimatic architecture.

Curator: Panos Giannikopoulos

 

Jenny Marketou, born in Athens and based in New York, shapes an artistic practice that interlaces ecological thought, public space, and collective action. Through installations, performances, educational and participatory projects, she creates infrastructures for coexistence and shared exploration. Her work has been presented at Documenta 14, Manifesta, Museo Reina Sofía, ZKM, Queens Museum, and the New Museum. Her recent projects, Wet Gatherings and Futuring Waters, connect artists, scientists, and communities around aquatic ecosystems and the forms of care they give rise to.

PARALLEL EVENTS

Ecology of Silence – Esther Lemi
Friday 10 and Saturday 11 October, 19:00–21:45
Free admission with online reservation
More information here

Garden Walks – Jenny Marketou, Panos Giannikopoulos
Friday 26 September 2025, 18:00–19:00
Friday 31 October 2025, 18:00–19:00
Free admission
More information here

Working Towards Care: Living Artistic Practices and Reveries on the Coexistence of Species – A Discussion with Elke Krasny and Jenny Marketou
Monday, 3 November 2025, 19:00–21:00
Conference Hall 1
A discussion with the audience will follow.
Free admission with online reservation
More information here

Before I Entered the Room, What Was I? – Marios Chatziprokopiou
Sunday 18 April, 18:00–19:30  
Free admission with online reservation
More information here

Small Nests, Big Worlds
Experiential workshop for ages 6-14
Technical & educational direction: Cob Social Cooperative 
Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 April 2026
Ticket: €5.00
More information here

ΠΛΗΡΟΦΟΡΙΕΣ

  • Duration: 12 September 2025 - May 2026

  • Monday – Sunday from 10 a.m. until sunset

  • Megaron Garden

  • Free Admission

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