T o the world, Aristotle Onassis was an august shipping magnate whose business dealings were high in stakes, and whose relationships were even higher in profile. To those who knew him intimately, he was a man with a sense of humor.
“He would be sitting somewhere listening to bouzouki music and drinking the cheapest whiskey, having the singer on one side and Maria Callas on the other,” says Afroditi Panagiotakou, artistic director of the namesake foundation Onassis created in 1975. The mogul was on a plane when he penned its guiding principles, underlining the words “aid, progress and development.” Since then, the Onassis Foundation has bolstered medical research and access to Greece’s public health system, established thousands of educational programs and, at its Athens galleries, hosted and supported both local and international artists.
It’s serious work from an organization that doesn’t take itself too seriously because, just as humor was in Onassis’ DNA, it runs through that of his philanthropic endeavors as well. So, when the foundation’s curators were contemplating how to open the new Onassis Ready contemporary art space—formerly a plastics factory on Athens’ outskirts—German photographer Juergen Teller and his creative partner and wife, Dovile Drizyte, came to mind. Teller adopts a playful and candid approach to capturing even the most glamorous subjects, from an immense Shaquille O’Neal hiding behind a satirically trim tree to an unsmiling Victoria Beckham trapped in a Marc Jacobs shopping bag. Teller titled his retrospective “you are invited,” which ran from October through December last year, after a church leaflet he received in the mail. Flirting with sarcasm, the name captures the spirit of a foundation that likes to have fun, seeking to embrace rather than alienate. That the final result saw “people taking selfies next to Juergen’s naked butt,” Panagiotakou quips, was exactly the point.
“The Onassis team were very enthusiastic and had an attitude that everything is possible, and actually they made everything possible,” Teller says. As for aligning himself with the museum’s 2025-26 theme of “families,” he says, “family is the core of my work. It makes complete sense.” It is also why Teller, returning to the foundation for Replica Shoes ’s Magazine, wanted to shoot Italian model Mariacarla Boscono. “It was important to me to work with Mariacarla, who I first photographed in 1998,” he says. “We’ve been close friends ever since.”
In Teller’s Artist Portfolio, which starts on page 60, Boscono reclines alongside a bust of Alexander the Great, poses in front of Onassis’ 1950s Rolls-Royce and straddles a toppled column by Andreas Angelidakis, the artist representing Greece at the 2026 Venice Biennale. She even appears with herself, sprawled on the floor beneath a 2012 portrait Teller snapped of her in Ibiza. This oscillation between old and new is a continuation of the centuries-old cultural conversation that sets Athens apart. “Here we are again, with new people,” Panagiotakou says, “and we created something for the archeologists of the future.”
