How Art Collector Dakis Joannou Helped Turn Hydra into an Art World Destination

The founder of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art has brought art world insiders to the island via his unique approach to commissions.

For the past many years, the Greek island of Hydra has been a regular destination for the art world jet set, with artists, dealers, collectors and curators all flocking to the beautiful Greek island right after Art Basel. If this exclusive hot spot sounds familiar, it may be because Pauline Karpidas—she of the famous summer “workshops”—sold her storied Hydra art collection at Sotheby’s last year.

While she certainly helped popularize the island as a retreat for the cultural elite, Greek-Cypriot arts patron and collector Dakis Joannou, founder of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, was instrumental in turning Hydra into an arts destination. The Athens-based foundation organizes various exhibitions and supports young artists with multiple awards, including the DESTE Prize, which is awarded bi-annually to a young Greek artist. In 2009, it opened DESTE Project Space Slaughterhouse on Hydra.

Joannou has an incredible collection of over 1,500 works, including works by Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Maurizio Cattelan and many other major players in the contemporary art scene. The first comprehensive exhibition of the Dakis Joannou Collection, “Everything That’s Interesting Is New,” was presented in 1993 at the Athens School of Fine Arts. But when Observer spoke with Joannou, he explained that the collection is a byproduct of the foundation, not the other way around, and “it’s not about the collection; it’s about engagement with the art scene.”

The first shows organized by the DESTE Foundation, starting in 1987, were initially held at the House of Cyprus, a project space on Hydra. Those included some groundbreaking exhibitions curated by Jeffrey Deitch, such as “Cultural Geometry” (1988), “Psychological Abstraction” (1989), “Artificial Nature” (1990) and “Post Human” (1992–1993), which brought to Greece thought-provoking experiential practices of artists like Takashi Murakami, Urs Fisher and Koons.

In 1998, the DESTE Foundation moved to its first permanent space—a former paper factory in the Athens neighborhood of Neo Psychico redesigned by American architect Christian Hubert—with an ambitious exhibition program that primarily drew on the Dakis Joannou Collection. The series culminated with “Monument to Now,” the foundation’s most ambitious project to date, held in conjunction with the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Cultural Program and organized with a stellar lineup of curators: Deitch, Dan Cameron, Alison Gingeras, Massimiliano Gioni and Nancy Spector.

SEE ALSO: Observer’s Guide to the Best Exhibitions in Athens This Summer

Today, in addition to its award for Greek artists and a rich exhibition program in Greece and internationally, the DESTE Foundation engages with other disciplines, as with its destefashioncollection artist commissions, which resulted in two extensive shows, first at the Benaki Museum in Athens and then at the Bass Museum in Miami. In our conversation, Joannou hinted to Observer that the foundation’s next project will also engage with design.

Through these and other projects, he has built close and solid relationships with a generation of artists that emerged between the 1980s and the 1990s. These connections eventually fueled several impressive artist commissions and a series of exhibitions held every summer at Project Space Slaughterhouse.

“We managed to get the Slaughterhouse from the municipality,” Joannou said. “It took me a little while, but eventually, we got it in 2008.” The original architecture was renovated, but much of its old identity was preserved, making this exhibition space particularly unique. It maintains its traditional Greek character while interacting with contemporary art and facing the blue of the Mediterranean Sea.

Joannou’s idea was to ask mid-career artists to do a project, inspired or not inspired by Hydra, at their discretion, but with a limited budget so they would be challenged. “The idea of the limited budget was important because I wanted to invite people who were my friends,” he explained. “They were successful artists already, but if they wanted to take up the challenge within the framework of the limited budget, that would be great, and that’s how I started. The first artist was Matthew Barney, who invited Elizabeth Peyton to join him.”

Now, every summer the space welcomes around 2,000 people or more for what has become a regular stop for many after Basel and subsequent trips around Europe to drop in on the Venice Biennale or Documenta, depending on the year. According to Joannou, the date was “deliberately chosen right after Basel, so people would be done with everything they had to do, and they could close the season and come together, have fun, relax and that’s it. The formula really worked”.

In the summer of 2024, the space is presenting a show of works by George Condo, “The Mad and the Lonely,” which features a number of small-scale paintings and sculptures from the artist’s long career that unravel the rich set of art historical references that inspired his iconic visual language. There’s also a series of new works, specifically made for the show, as Joannou is still challenging his chosen artists. “When I asked him, he was like, who needs another George Condo show? I told him nobody, so it’s up to you to figure out a show that is not just another Condo show.”

And so he did. Here, Condo has used in an unprecedented way the ancient elements of polychromatic Greek painting to combine minimalistic sculpture with the shocking and uncanny presence of his typical haunting portraits. While those works create a special interaction with the context where they’re shown and the ancient technique, the entire exhibition also highlights Condo’s ability to capture the volatility of human emotions and the precarious nature of our mental states as he investigates the complexity of human psychology and emphatically comments on the stress and distress caused by urban modern life. The paradoxical combination of humor and drama, the grotesque and beauty, resonates with the dichotomies that characterized ancient Greek culture, its theatre and its art, furthering the symbolic resonances of this special dialogue between contemporary and ancient cultures.

A similar challenge also brought Jeff Koons to the island, despite the minimal budget. “We were having lunch in New York one day, and then Hydra came into the conversation, and [Koons] said that I was insufficient for him to make a show,” Joannou recalled. “I replied that the budget was probably not even enough for him to get a coffee in the morning. But he said, ‘Don’t worry; I’ll do it without a budget.'” When Koons came, he didn’t want to show Joannou what he was working on, and he even made the DESTE team sign a non-disclosure agreement. Joannou’s first glimpse of Koons’ work was two hours before the exhibition opening. “It was a remarkable gesture, the fact that he wanted to give me this authentic first impression experience.”

One of the most iconic pieces from Koon’s show, a towering golden sun, is still installed on Project Space Slaughterhouse, serving as a symbol for the foundation and the entire island. In the reflectivity of its polished stainless steel, Apollo continues the inspiring conversations between Greek mythology and contemporary art that Hydra inspires.

These and other stories Joannou shared with us suggest that the shows and projects, which have showcased the work of artists like David Shirley, Kiki Smith, Roberto Cuoghi and Paul Chan, are more of a gift than proper commissions… a sign of gratitude from the artists for what DESTE Foundation has done for the arts and for Hydra. Koons came this June for the most recent Project Space Slaughterhouse event, celebrating the opening of his friend and colleague George Condo’s show, along with many other artists, including Cindy Sherman or Maurizio Cattelan.

“It’s completely informal,” Joannou concluded. “People know that they’re welcome even if they don’t get invited, so they show up. Locals or foreigners or whatever, we keep it informal and casual so people can meet people, connect and have fun. All this creates a special kind of energy, but I’m surprised to see the extent to which it’s worked.”