IYP X The Hellenic Centre, London
Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands
Curated by Katerina Hadji
Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands is the first international exhibition from the Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection outside Greece. Presented in collaboration with The Hellenic Centre, and curated by Katerina Hadji, the exhibition brings together 17 works by 15 international artists including Vlassis Caniaris, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marc Chagall, Bouchra Khalili, among others. With most of the works shown in the UK for the first time, this presentation marks a new chapter for the collection as it develops international partnerships, extending the programme beyond the collection’s own space in Athens.
One year after inaugurating the Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection Space in Athens with Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands, the exhibition now travels in a new form to The Hellenic Centre, London, offering a renewed perspective while introducing the collection to a broader international audience. The title draws on the German word Fernweh, literally meaning “longing for distant places”–to evoke the Romantic desire for the unattainable and to read the world through the intertwined lenses of knowledge, memory, and imagination. Taking up the conceptual framework of the original exhibition and responding to the distinct exhibition space at The Hellenic Centre, this iteration turns toward a subtle new focus on how Greece is imagined, remembered, and continually reinvented, both as place and idea.
Spanning sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, collage, video, lightboxes, and books, and dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, the exhibition brings together artists who become observers, navigating between experience and imagination, idealised projection and historical consciousness. They approach Greece not as a fixed geography but as a cultural and symbolic construct, long defined by journeys, myths, and contested memory. Across these works, they trace how the country has been seen and reinterpreted over time, from a Romantic fascination with its antiquity to the lived realities of displacement, from travel as a search for meaning to the museum as a debated ground where heritage is reframed and debated. Greece appears here not as something fixed but as terrain open to projection and reconfiguration, a land where past and present keep speaking to one another through the act of looking itself.
Public events
October 13, 18:00-21:00
Exhibition Private View
Private view of the exhibition during the official opening
Bookings required via helleniccentre.org
October 16, 2026, 9:30-11:00
In Conversation: Irene Y. Panagopoulos, Katerina Hadji & Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki
9:30 Breakfast | 10:00–11:00 Discussion incl. Q&A
Following a breakfast reception, a conversation brings together Irene Y. Panagopoulos, Founder of the eponymous collection, and Katerina Hadji, curator of the show, in conversation with Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki, Director of The Hellenic Centre. They come together to explore the ideas behind the exhibition—the longing for distant places, the act of collecting as a way of understanding the world, and Greece as both place and idea, continually imagined and reinvented across centuries through the works of the collection.
Bookings required via helleniccentre.org
October 17, 2026, 11:00-12:00
Guided Tour
A curator-led walkthrough of the exhibition with Katerina Hadji. Drawing on her curatorial work shaping the show, she introduces the artists and the connections between their works, offering a closer reading of the dialogues that emerge between them.
Bookings required via helleniccentre.org
Curated by Katerina Hadji
Participating artists: Kader Attia, Lynda Benglis, Vlassis Caniaris, Marc Chagall, Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, William Nelson Copley, Claire Fontaine, Bouchra Khalili, Brice Marden, Martin Parr, Elizabeth Peyton, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, Sean Scully, Thomas Struth, Rodrigo Torres
Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection
Founder: Irene Y. Panagopoulos
Board of Trustees: Elli Tsangrides Panagopoulos, Pericles Tsangrides Panagopoulos, Philippos Tsangrides Panagopoulos
Advisors: Roupen Kalfayan, Irene Kalliga
Head of Collection: Katerina Hadji
Registrars: Christina Makri, Dora Paisi
Public Programme & Exhibition Production: Foteini Salvaridi
International Press Communications: Sutton
Communication: Katerina Zachou
Collection Assistant: Matina Tsigakou
The Hellenic Centre
Director: Nayia Yiakoumaki
Premises Manager: Marian Barbut
Receptionist & Administration Assistant: Christina Gkika
Press and Marketing Officer: Medea Manaz
Membership & Fund Development Manager: Maria Kalli
Office Administrator: Chrysa Skliopidou
Language Courses and Cultural Events Manager: Evangelia Roussou
Public Programmes & Events Coordinator: Angy Sanchez Castrillon
Events Sales & Business Development Manager: Kay Stavrinou
Special thanks to external collaborators Janine Catalano and Sofia Karamani.
Exhibition Production
Artwork Insurance: DAES
Artwork Transportation & Installation: Move Art
Wooden Constructions: Vassilis Kaltsis
Technical Support: Antonis Gatzougiannis, Makis Faros
Graphic Design: Bend
Text Editing: Apostolos Vassilopoulos
Printing: Pletsas Kardari