he eleventh residency cycle of bEam arts has memory as its focal point. More specifically, it concerns the very personal and sensitive glances at what we remember and what  objects we associate with our memories. Hence the title of the exhibition, “Memorabilia”. Objects and images connected to events and places of which memory is important for each person who collects the objects. The artists of this residency cycle create their own memorabilia: street photographs, small-scale sculptures and items  made of fabric, wood, metal. Each work contains different memories. Some concern the “outside”, the journey, the wandering, the new stimuli. Others again deal with the interior, of the home, the family, the community.

Shay Amitai, approaches in her photographic work issues related to intimacy, closeness, family and the warmth of interpersonal relationships. Her photographic records often coexist with soft materials such as fabric or felt, while even photographs are printed on fabric. The series of works she presents at bEam concern both the home and the city. On the one hand, photographs of her own familiar environments and faces, on colorful fabrics and felts that she found or created in Thessaloniki. On the other, an obsessive recording of clothes hanging on the balconies of the city, which she photographs and records on video again and again, approaching in this way a threshold between private and public life. In this way, she creates two types of memorabilia. Those that belong to her own home and those that concern her wanderings and the search for domestic life in an unfamiliar place.

Isabella DiGravino is a photographer with studies in art history. In her work, she approaches the world around her through the lens of realism. She wants her photographs to have as raw a quality as possible, with as little intervention as possible for the final result. She is also interested in the idea of ​​balance and symmetry in the images she captures. The works she presents in this exhibition are street photographs, which either focus on architectural forms of the city, or on the presence of people moving within the urban space. She takes a journey through the city, from the most touristy spots to the quietest neighborhoods, wanting to record what she finds authentic and interesting within all these urban environments. Her work becomes a record and memory of a city, in which DiGravino finds moments of symmetry and urban vibrancy.

Shangari Mwashighanti is an artist with dual origins from Kenya and America. She is anti-disciplinary in the sense that the works she produces are not limited to just one medium or approach. What interests her recent artistic practice is the concept of value, of preciousness, in how and why it is attributed to objects, or subtracted from them. She ultimately wants to subvert the associations that are conventional about the value materials. The works she presents in the exhibition are parts of an artistic unity that pays homage to her Kenyan origins. She incorporates elements such as cowrie shells, or old posters from African-American clothing stores onto wood or metal, creating sculptural objects, mementos of communities that have existed and communities that can exist.

Veerle Van Nuffelen is a ceramicist with her work revolving around the creation of installations with ceramics. Through her practice she focuses on issues related to social relations and issues of sustainable art production. In terms of form, her work includes a great deal of  experimentation with different textures, layered materials and the use of materials that are considered waste. In the ceramics she created during her residency at bEam arts, she utilizes the rammed earth technique, which is used in the construction of areas with a dry climate, by raw materials such as clay, gravel or loam, without the use of additional thermal energy beyond that of the sun. She creates cubes of rammed earth with different materials and textures, while within them she inserts fragments of ceramic vessels and objects that she found in Thessaloniki. She thus creates an archive of stories, real and hypothetical, for all these broken objects, which take on a second life, while at the same time recalling objects of a paradoxical archaeology.