Despoina Tzanou is an independent curator, writer and art historian based in Athens, Greece. 

Her curatorial practice and creative writing draw on literature, myth, and folk stories to examine how dominant narratives shape collective understanding. Bringing together feminist, decolonial, and speculative perspectives, her work looks at how cultural symbols and structures take hold, and how they might be reimagined in relation to social, political, psychological, technological, and environmental concerns. 

Her projects have been featured in Mousse, frieze, émergent, Artsy, Flash Art, El Pais, Artsy, CURA, Art Viewer, KUBA Paris, Anniversary, Umbigo, Publico, Time Out , and The Art Newspaper, among others.

Since 2017, she has worked internationally with galleries and institutions, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), Cell Project Space (London), Forum Arte (Braga), and the B&M Theocharakis Foundation (Athens). She also co-founded DOW Curatorial Collective (2016-2018), presenting exhibitions outside traditional gallery settings in London.  

From 2019-2024 she took on the role of Director at Duarte Sequeira Gallery in Braga, where she worked closely with emerging and established artists on research-driven projects, developed an artist residency and annual sculpture park programme, and contributed to the gallery's expansion to Seoul. She additionally initiated GDS WAREHOUSE, a project space launched in 2021 in partnership with Semibreve Experimental Electronic Music Festival and supported by Frame Funding Finland.  

In 2022/2023, she was awarded the ARTWORKS Curatorial Fellowship by the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Foundation, Athens. 

In 2026, she participated as a Mentor at CAPITÃO Residency in in São Marcos do Campo, Alentejo, in Portugal. Additionally, she was a guest Lecturer at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, for the 2026 edition of the Contemporary Art Summer School, under the theme “What is at stake?”.

Tzanou holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the London Metropolitan University, in partnership with CASS and the Whitechapel Art Gallery (2017); and a BA in Theory and History of Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2015). 

(CV upon request)