Jan 29 2026
ESPRESSOBAR: Egill Sæbjörnsson, Theo Triantafyllidis, Polina Miliou | Presented at Art Genève 2026 / Special Projects
Thurs | 2PM
Swiss Institute (SI) is pleased to present ESPRESSOBAR, a participatory artwork by Egill Sæbjörnsson, Theo Triantafyllidis, and Polina Miliou. The project investigates world-building, gaming, and performativity, inviting visitors into an environment where the boundaries of reality and fiction remain in dynamic flux. Conceived as a hybrid space that merges social interaction with artistic intervention, ESPRESSOBAR transforms the familiar commercial formats of an espresso bar and an art fair into a stage for collective experimentation.
Within this setting, conversation and artistic gesture continually intersect. ESPRESSOBAR foregrounds the cultural exchange embedded in global coffee rituals, tracing how shared habits of drinking, gathering, and lingering around a counter can both anchor community together and crack open portals to stranger, more speculative modes of expression. Guests are invited to sip coffee, observe the shifting rhythms of the space, and engage in spontaneous dialogue with other visitors and with the baristas, who may, at any moment, slip into roles that complicate the distinction between service, performance, and storytelling. By overlaying everyday hospitality with playful disruption, the work dissolves the lines between an art exhibition, a social hub, and a commercial venue.
At ESPRESSOBAR, the atmosphere is never static. At times, everything appears ordinary: cups clink, machines hum, and the mood is tranquil. At other moments, the energy tilts toward the uncanny. The coffee seems unusually potent; an order mutates into an incantation; and conversation becomes part of a loose choreography. Espresso may surge forth like lava coaxed from an ancient machine god, hinting at mythic forces simmering beneath the surface of the everyday.
Visitors occupy multiple roles at once: customers, witnesses, performers, and co-conspirators in a narrative that unfolds gradually and unpredictably. ESPRESSOBAR examines our evolving relationship with the agents that quietly structure daily life, from the chemical vitality of caffeine to the agricultural networks sustaining the global coffee plant. By framing these relationships through humor, fantasy, and collective imagination – of both humans and the non-human species of caffeine – the work proposes a community built around food, drink, and shared curiosity. In doing so, it invites us to reconsider the spaces where routine ends and invention begins, and to wonder whether, in this drama, the coffee itself might also be watching.
On the occasion of the installation, on Thursday January 29 at 2PM the artists will be joined by SI Director Stefanie Hessler for a conversation as part of Art Genève / Art talks entitled, ESPRESSOBAR: Come for the espresso, stay for the espresso.
ESPRESSOBAR is featured in the Special Projects section of Art Genève 2026 at the invitation of the fair. SI wishes to thank Art Genève for their generous support of this project.
Image: ESPRESSOBAR by Egill Sæbjörnsson, Theo Triantafyllidis, Polina Miliou. Presented at Art Genève 2026 by Swiss Institute, New York. Courtesy of the artists. Rendering by Fabien Neisius.