Babousis Manolis (1950)

Born in Athens in 1950, he studied at the School of Architecture of the University of Florence (1969-1975); he also studied at the Restoration Dept of the I.C.C.R. in Rome on a UNESCO scholarship (1975-1977). He returned to Greece in 1978 and worked as an architect and photographer till 1998, and as art director in cinema advertising production companies (1988-1996). In 1998 he was elected assistant professor at the ASFA, where he designed and implemented the infrastructure of the Photography Workshop. He was elected vice-chancellor in 2010, and taught as deputy professor until he resigned in 2013.
Initially his photographs were inspired by the countryside of Florence, but his first complete series in the early ’70s comprised a series of portraits and interiors from various mental hospitals in Italy. In 1975 he presented his graduation thesis in architecture in the form of an installation/monument on the subject of “institutionalisation of space”. In the ’80s he began to photograph empty interior spaces, public or private, open-air areas or street scenes and views of tourist areas in Greece and Europe during their peak season. He often contrasts monochrome and colour photos of exterior and interior spaces, setting up a dialogue between them. In the ’90s his interest turned to the urban landscape of Athens, focusing on ATMs and bank interiors. Interior spaces remain dominant in his work of the next period (courtrooms, schools, TV studios, factories) with no particular emphasis on the human presence but always with a subtly critical approach. In 2014 he presented Beyond Planning at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre, a sculptural installation with drawings, photographs, poetry and a video projection as a complex reference to artistic and social phenomena and to his own artistic course.
He has presented his work in several solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, and participated in dozens of local and international group exhibition: Eidos (Besançon, 2014); Art in Europe since 1945: Beyond Boundaries (Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014); Contemporary Index/2Pulsion (Galeria Hilario Galguera, Mexico City 2007); Gesture; A Visual Library in progress (Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, 2005); Breakthrough! Grecia 2004 (Madrid, 2004), etc. His works can be found in public and private collections in Greece and abroad.