Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection – The Hellenic Centre

Bringing together 15 international artists and 17 works from the Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection, Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands considers Greece as a place shaped not only by geography, but by journeys, myths, memories and imagination.

The exhibition takes its title from the German word Fernweh, meaning a longing for distant places — including those never personally visited. Moving between experience and reverie, the works explore the human desire to reach beyond the familiar, pursuing places and ideas that may remain forever unattainable.

Spanning sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, collage, video, lightboxes and books, the exhibition brings together works dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Artists including Marc Chagall, Lynda Benglis, Martin Parr, Brice Marden, Bouchra Khalili and Niki de Saint Phalle reflect on Greece as both a real and imagined landscape, shaped by cultural memory, historical consciousness and centuries of romantic projection.

First presented in Athens in 2025, the exhibition arrives in London with a renewed perspective, responding to the distinctive surroundings of the Hellenic Centre. Curated by Katerina Hadji, it invites visitors to consider how knowledge, memory and desire influence the way places are seen — and how a country can become an enduring symbol for those who know it, remember it or simply dream of it.

Find out more here.