Skip to Content

Jim Cogswell: "The Veins of Men" Opens in Athens, Greece

January 12, 2026

The Veins of Men, a solo exhibition of Stamps Professor Jim Cogswell’s mixed media drawings, will open at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens, Greece on Friday, January 16.

A chaotic seascape featuring the outlines of ancient ships sinking in turbulent water. Numerous flaming orange hands reach upward toward dark, swirling clouds, with a golden net draped across the top left corner.
Invasion by Sea

The Veins of Men is a response to filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis’ cinematic adaptations of three tragedies by Euripides dealing with the Trojan War and its aftermath: Electra (1962), The Trojan Women (1971), and Iphigenia (1977). The drawings are in close conversation with Vinyl Euripides, Cogswell’s 2022 adhesive vinyl installation on three floors of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation surrounding this exhibition, which also responds to the cinematic trilogy.

A feverish composition in yellow and violet showing a prophetic figure among many reaching orange hands. Key symbols include a large spectral axe, a tangled net, a burning torch, and classical architectural ruins.
Cassandra’s Prophecy

By following Cacoyannis’ adaptations, Cogswell builds on a long history of restaging these tragedies to examine the human suffering caused by war, imperial overreach, and the arrogant abuse of power. Within each drawing, viewers can identify multiple panels from the installation compressed within a single image, inviting us to re-examine Vinyl Euripides and the films on which it is based to derive fresh meanings from their ghostly synchronicities. By over laying multiple scenes from the three narratives within single frames, Cogswell suggests the unseen entanglements that bind these ancient stories into such a persistent vision of our human position; the existential web of fate and circumstance that governs each of our lives.

A layered, multimedia artwork in pink and blue tones featuring a central female figure with multiple translucent faces. Flaming orange hands emerge from her body, set against a backdrop of ancient Greek ships and golden net patterns.
Clytemnestra’s Rage

This exhibition is made possible with funding from the Stamps School of Art & Design, the University of Michigan Office of Research, and the Modern Greek Program in the Department of Classical Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.

The Veins of Men
Exhibition Dates: January 16 — February 4, 2026
Michael Cacoyannis Foundation
206 Piraeus Str. (near Chamosternas Str.) Tavros, Athens 177 78