FENIA KOTSOPOULOU
I constantly explore new perspectives, theories and tools for understanding and
critically thinking about the Body and Performance; I experiment on an
interdisciplinary basis within a fluid conceptual framework in order to develop
skills in different fields like technology, curatorial practices, advanced somatic
practices, research and documentation : which all contribute to the formation of the
more holistic artistic practice I desire to expand.
I draw my inspiration from everyday life experiences, encounters and events. I
consider everything as possible source of inspiration, from the mundane to the
extraordinary. Consciously or unconsciously there are many aspects to daily
experience, often small or overlooked, which work their way into my creative work,
either as seed or influence. I try not to observe a boundary between Art and Life,
preferring instead to see them as one and the same thing, enabling me to draw
influence from a wide and varied range of sources.
Living in several different places Greece, Italy, Germany and the UK has benefited
my outlook and practice as I've gained multi layered experiences, insights from the
different cultures I've been a part of. Traveling and living in abroad, formal training
and studies, daily life and encounters are taking the form of a ToolBox I use in my life
and my artistic practice.
My artistic work is an attempt to develop a unified, fluid, hybrid and expressive
personal language, using vocabularies induced by performance, dance/instant
composition, technology, video, photography and site specific improvisation, in order to
transliterate emotional states present in and generated by situation, architecture and
somatic experience. Specifically, I am interested in exploring the synthesis of somatic,
spatial, and visual to create new coherent expressions.
Pivotal topics of recent projects include the Body as gathering place of emotions
and site of transformation, personal and collective memory, fragmentation,
construction and deconstruction of female identity, performativity of documentation
and different uses of personal archives. In search of an holistic way to express my
vision, and based on a rhizomatic approach of making art, I collaborate with artists
from different fields and different cultural backgrounds.
Observation, experimentation, fusion, critical reflection, movement research and
analysis, are the main tools I use in order to keep enriching and challenging both my
practice and my somatic experience.