Hotel Aristide, the new boutique eco hotel on the lesser-known Greek island of Syros in the Cyclades is launching a programme of artist residences for 2022. The seven international artists will work at the hotel, exhibit their art in the hotel’s gallery and hold weekly workshops or talks with guests.
The nine-room hotel in a restored neclassical mansion in the historical centre of Hermoupolis, opened softly during lock down last year with a focus on design, art and sustainability and is reopening on 1 April with a new rooftop restaurant, three new plunge pool suites and an environmental regeneration programme.
The artists in residence are as follows:
7 to 17 April 2022 – Giorgos Alifragis and Nena Komaki
Greek illustrator and graphic designer Giorgos Alifragis and his wife Nena Komaki operate a creative studio from Hermoupolis, where they work with a range of digital and traditional mediums, as well as experimenting with photography, illustration and motion design. Their work has won awards at the London and Athens IOOC.
6 to 19 June 2022 – Simon Dahlgen Stråat
Simon Dahlgen Stråat is a Swedish figurative painter, living and working in Stockholm. His narrative paintings provide a sombre and surreal window into the mind of the artist. His work is centred on the idea of time: more explicitly, the slowing down of it. He creates scenes that incorporate images from fiction, history or everyday life.
20 to 26 June 2022 – Lavinia Cernau
Lavinia Carnau is a travel, fashion and lifestyle photographer based in Transylvania, Romania, who is passionate about the Mediterranean. Her visual perspective brings together colour, light and narrative. Her work is imbued with a sense of nostalgia, freedom and summer sensuality in candid scenes, where her subjects feel honest and at ease. Lavinia’s landscapes, interiors, fashion and portraiture have appeared in publications such as Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue and Suitcase Magazine.
12 to 25 September 2022 – Daniel Cooke
Daniel Cooke is an emerging artist from the UK, whose paintings have been exhibited nationally. Cook paints striking portraits in oil, charcoal and chalk that explore themes of masculinity, superstition and religion. He always prefers work that leaves evidence of the process that made it. To this end he always hopes to ensure brushwork and gesture leave any work as interesting up close as from a distance.
26 September to 9 October 2022 – Arthur Vallin
French Artist, Designer, Arthur Vallin’s passion and dedication to process inspire him to constantly discover new manufacturing techniques and innovative shapes that he brings to life through hand-picked materials and executed by the best French craftsmen. His collectible design line is a new way for him to experiment with one-of-a-kind shapes and materials. He lives and works in New York City, where he operates his design studio. The studio is now well recognized in the creative field and has won numerous accolades including Cannes Lions, Clio Awards, and D&AD for its set design.
9 to 30 October 2022 – Christiaan Conradie
Christiaan Conradie is a contemporary artist from South Africa. Conradie loves the aged body, primarily male and his impacting, hyper-realistic figures appear as dismembered, uncomplete, textured and sensitively rendered. Conradie points out the limits of the human body and its weaknesses. Through research and painting, he re-creates personalities that embody time and flesh, bodies that are fragmented and dismembered and yet retain a vivid expression. His subjects are infinite beings that address the issue of age and death.
One more artist will be in residence later in the year – the dates are still to be confirmed.
Hotel Aristide has a permanent art collection, which can be found throughout the rooms and public spaces and includes original works by artists such as Christy Lee Rogers, Igor Skaletsky, and Riccardo Vecchio. The dedicated art gallery will host the temporary exhibitions by resident artists.
Syros is hardly known abroad and remains an authentic and lived-in place, with an urbane, year-round arts scene, with numerous festivals (international film, jazz, street art, animation and classical music), a university, student bars and galleries, in addition to the secluded beaches, diving spots, walking trails and foodie havens.
The owners, sisters Jasmin and Oana Aristide,,themselves descendants of the Greek diaspora in the Ottoman empire, fell in love with the island and the house, one of the last neoclassical mansions to be built in Greece. Keeping changes to a minimum to maintain the generous spaces and original architectural details, they have combined traditional materials with contemporary furnishings and lighting to create a beautiful home and a hotel that is connected to its culturally unique location, not just by virtue of being in Syros, but by being integrated in local culture and society.
Hotel Aristide opens on April 1st with prices from EUR 240 per night with breakfast and transfers. Syros is a two-hour ferry ride from Athens or a 30-minute ferry ride from Mykonos.