Many people perceive the eclipse of narratives. The reason usually given has to do with the era, a "relativistic" or "managerial" era, where grand narratives would seem either common or false or - worst of all - outdated. And it is a fact that, for the most part, the fields of public discourse - politics, science, philosophy - seem to disown them. We live in a world where, apparently, the big, dark, nebulous issues of existence are increasingly becoming theoretical objects.
In this sense, contemporary art is a privileged field. Although it often seems to have taken a long time to claim the possibilities of other fields, art continues - in its most important expressions at least - to maintain this privilege: it speaks about all those things that no one else can touch, in a way that no one can imagine before encountering it. The grand narratives, perhaps more than in any other era, belong to art.
Of course, this is not an obvious or self-evident privilege. Even when a work of art claims it, something else is required for the work to acquire its meaning. This is the commitment of the viewer, the possibility of his inclusion in the narrative, in a way that the monologue of the work becomes the monologue of the viewer, like a double recitation.
It is a challenge to incorporate such narratives into a broader narrative. From some perspectives, it is a hybrid. And it would not be difficult to find many who would consider such a thing unacceptable from an ethical point of view. Specifically, the artists participating in this exhibition are likely not the ones you would expect to see - at least all together. Many are certainly so different from each other in terms of their goals and methods that it is difficult to imagine in advance how they fit into the same narrative.
However, we propose that narrative is precisely the way in which the following are ensured: Every work of art is by itself a complex of multi-layered readings that allows us to get lost in the gap that opens in front of us and to recognize ourselves in it in various ways. At the same time, there is still a basic thread that we follow, a broad reading that leads us step by step in the course of history and therefore to a specific commitment to the works, to a deep identification with them.
The exhibition "Destroy Athens" tells a story. [...]
If there is something that the exhibition "Destroy Athens" is not, then it is not a survey. It does not aim to be a barometer of artistic production at this moment, nor to teach anyone what is important today in contemporary art or in the geopolitical context. It does not even want to express an opinion about what is important, crucial, interventionist, or new, it does not want to argue for one practice or against another, it does not want to predict where things are going now or where they will be tomorrow.
It is a story. As a story, we hope that it makes sense between the moment it begins and the moment it ends.

(from the introduction by the curators of the exhibition: Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, and Augustine Zenakou)