Sophia Handaka is a social anthropologist and curator of the Benaki Museum’s Collection of World Culture. The donation of 151 African art objects became the starting point of Africanisms, a long-term collaborative project developed with members of the Afro-diasporic communities of Athens, with the mediation of ANASA Cultural Center. Together participants visited the museum storerooms, handled objects and shared memories, knowledge and personal stories that ultimately shaped the exhibition Africa Amongst Us* (2025). The exhibition juxtaposed colonial readings of African art with a co-designed curatorial approach that presented objects through both scholarly interpretation and community voices. 

In this video, Handaka takes us to the Benaki Museum/Pireos 138 building and discusses with Fekerte Tedla Mengesha on the Ethiopian Mesob, a sacred woven basket-table symbolising family, care and everyday faith—recently accessioned in the Department’s collections as an object of a “living culture”. Connecting the project to the realities of contemporary multicultural Athens, she invites visitors to look beyond the city’s monuments and discover neighbourhoods such as Kypseli and Patisia, where diverse communities continue to shape the city’s plural social and cultural landscape.