After its first, very successful edition, illustradays is back in the city, bringing to Athens a piece of creativity from each corner of the world and the first ever illustration festival of Greece. A festival presenting more than 150 artists and welcoming over 3,500 visitors who love illustration and illustrated books in the 2021 edition.
Colorful exhibitions, interactive workshops, outstanding creatures living in book pages and artworks, experts sharing their secrets in inspiring talks and portfolio review sessions, networking events for illustrators, a big, open library, guests from all over the world and many many more creative happenings are being prepared for September 2022, in this joyful, colorful and inclusive celebration.
illustradays 2022 will be held on 9-18 of September, at Serafio City of Athens, with free entrance for all its visitors.
Serafio City of Athens is a contemporary center of Sports, Culture and Innovation. Its minimal and sleek exhibition space along with its neat outdoor facilities are a perfect match since the festival grows and combines more stimuli, more colors, more collaborations. Starting from the exhibitions! The team is preparing three exhibitions from Greek and international artists. More specifically:
illustradays continues its collaboration with Fondazione Zavrel and the exhibition Le Immagini Della Fantasia, thanks to the support of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Atene, giving the audience the opportunity to meet international artists and discover the latest trends in the field of illustration. Gabriel Pacheco, artist and curator, inspired by this year’s theme, is going through a mini retrospection of the previous editions and suggests a mosaic of artists and artworks, exclusively for illustradays 2022. These artworks will travel to Athens, introducing brand new techniques, books and stories from all over the globe.
The second exhibition will be the outcome of another creative collaboration, this time with the Greek Section of International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Mapping out the journey of illustration in Greece, which would you say are the most important stops? illustradays and the Greek Section of IBBY are joining forces and setting up an exhibition dedicated to our childhood’s favorite books and to Greek illustrators who defined the field.
Also, in a few weeks, the festival will announce its theme for 2022, a theme that will inspire artists, through an open call, to create artworks that will be part of its third, specially curated exhibition.
And there’s more! In every edition, illustradays introduces to the audience the work of a Greek illustrator, proposing them the role of the Art Director and commissioning them to also design the visual identity of the year under a specific theme.
Iris Samartzi is a children’s books illustrator and her books received many awards, including the 2016 International Compostela Prize for Picture Books, the Greek State Picture Book Award (2012, 2016, 2021) and the Greek IBBY Award (2012, 2015, 2016, 2017). When she is not illustrating books, she runs art workshops for children. She’s been nominated twice for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (2020 HCAA and 2022 HCAA) by the Greek Section of IBBY. She was also a candidate for the 2021 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA).
illustradays didn’t just choose her because of people’s great admiration and love for her work, but also because of all the techniques, materials and ideas that make her artworks so unique and original. She also created the 2022 poster, which the team is super excited to reveal.
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