Ιn celebration of their tenth anniversary, FYTA presented an exhibition / happening at Sub Rosa Space in Athens. In the event, FYTA reflected on the radical ambivalence generated by the iconoclastic and often narcissistic insistence of featuring themselves centrally in their artistic practice. In the intro text of the event, FYTA attempted a mapping of those who love them and those who hate them, but most importantly those who love to hate them including “far-right priests, conspiratorial fine artists, scandal-mongering yellow papers, antiquity-obsessed gatekeepers of ‘good aesthetics’, hurt frenemies, house-trained boytoys of the Onassis foundation, incel bots, pharisaic tenderqueers, (crypto?)homophobic modernist museum curators, and more” and invited the audience to reflect on what triggers these heterogeneous crowds so much.

On the walls, the visitors could engage with hundreds of different FYTA portraits generated through Artificial Intelligence algorithms re-working John Biebel’s FYTA portaits from 2013. The image of the duo seemed to be out of time and beyond meaning, welding together fragments of the global collective unconscious. As the duo stated at the beginning of the event, “FYTA persevere as the waves of history strip humans of their perishable flesh. FYTA are eternal; the HATE and LOVE of the world fuels their hearts.” The even also featured a series of performative homages to past FYTA songs, composed and performed by friends and collaborators.

On the walls: John Biebel, FYTA portraits, 2013, oil on canvas & DALL-E, 150 Studies on FYTA portraits by John Biebel, digital prints
On site: Kangela Tromokratisch, Metatheodosia, Prokni, Spyros Patsouras (Sphoenix), MaYo, YOTA5, Veronique Tromokratish, DJ Tsoli

Photos by Alex Kat, Mihalis Gkatzogias