What if front pages were not just vessels of information, but canvases of memory, critique, and resistance? This was the question behind Frontpage: Next, a cross-disciplinary project held from May 2 to 11, 2025, in Athens, Greece. Timed to World Press Freedom Day, it brought together visual artists, journalists, academics, and media theorists to explore how headlines shape our collective imagination and ask what remains unseen beneath them.
Exhibited at the Melina, City of Athens Cultural Center, Frontpage: Next reimagined the front page as a conceptual medium, bringing contemporary art into conversation with the visual language of journalism. The project combined a major group exhibition with performances, screenings, an academic symposium, and a public debate on media literacy.
Curated by Eva Maragaki (AxionArt Director), Julia Sysalova (AICA Member, Vice President of the Institute of Mediterranean Culture, ECI Research Fellow), Mario Nottas (Head of ECI–European Communication Institute), and Vicky Pericleous (Assistant Professor, Cyprus University of Technology, Curator of the Cypriot Delegation), the project assembled a broad range of emerging and established voices.
"Shared experience dismantles monolithic perception," note co-curators Eva Maragaki and Julia Sysalova. "We begin to see multiplicity, embracing difference as a norm. In this context, the curator is no longer a directive voice, but an organizer of a thought space where diverse perspectives intersect and coexist."
Marina Razheva. Απουσία / Απ' ουσία, 2025
This approach informed all stages of the project: from the invitation to artists across disciplines and generations, to the collective construction of a space where art could engage with the complex semiotics of news media.
More than 55 artists from Greece, Cyprus, the USA, Spain, Germany, and Lebanon responded to an open call by selecting front pages—iconic or forgotten, print or digital—and reinterpreting them through art. The exhibition included paintings, sculptures, installations, performances, photography, and video.
Themes included the visual archeology of news, the media’s complicity in power structures, the fading line between fact and fiction, and the deep codes of propaganda and persuasion. Several works addressed historical memory, others tackled ecological crisis, migration, media manipulation, or digital disinformation.
Following its debut in Athens in 2023 and its presentation in Cyprus in 2024, Frontpage: Next will continue to Salonica in 2026 and Vienna in 2027, expanding its dialogue on the relationship between art, journalism, and democracy. The project demonstrates how contemporary art can offer new ways of reading and interpreting the news.
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