ATHENS — “Sea, sunshine and intercourse, with some Greek columns in the history,” mentioned Poka Yio, the artistic director of the Athens Biennale. He was summing up the Greek government’s tourism campaigns in the 2000s as he led a visitor about a rambling former department shop that was a single of the internet sites of the 2021 version. Portion of the inspiration for setting up the biennale in 2007, he mentioned, was to alter that stereotype: “We preferred to place Athens on the modern artwork cultural map.” Fifteen many years later on, Athens is surely on the worldwide artwork group radar, nevertheless more as a curiosity than a significant hub.…