FENIA KOTSOPOULOU
STRAT/osphere
14-17 February 2024
4bid Gallery, Amsterdam (NL)
STRATA is the fifth performance art and film hybrid by artist duo VestAndPage (Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes). It is a film of philosophical, poetic action exploring caves as proto-spaces for altered states and sites of knowledge-making and human becoming. Some of the oldest known examples of human figurative artworks have been found within the caves of the Swabian Jura in Germany. VestAndPage convened an interdisciplinary gathering of over 20 artists and scientists to engage with these unique spaces and places and challenge central ontological and social issues.
The environment for the audio art installation by Douglas Quinn is conceived as a complement to the film. Rather than recreate the film's soundtrack, the installation focuses on conveying some of the experience of the caves themselves with audio gathered in situ, from performances to soundscapes. The soundscape benefits from daz disley’s elegant 14 channels sound system, appropriately designed for 4bid Gallery and offering numerous possibilities for immersive engagement in an intimate setting.
As part of a broader range of inquiry involving archiving and documentation, the exhibition features a range of multimedia visual elements. These include artifacts from the film and still photographs taken primarily by Marcel Sparmann and Fenia Kotsopoulou during production - with contributions by daz disley, VestAndPage, and Douglas Quinn. All the images have been processed by Fenia using various printing methods such as soil chromatography, chlorophyl, image transfer and cyanotype on latex, fabric, paper, gelatin and bioplastic. The hybrid techniques on different materials and surfaces are a form of ‘artistic stratigraphy’––Illuminating the materiality, affect, and tactility of both image and the journey of STRATA.
With sounds and voices by Susanne Weins (voice), Ralf Peters (voice), Andreas Bauer Kanabas (bass) and Stephan Knies (violin), as well as the cave environments. With performance portraits by Aldo Aliprandi, Marianna Andrigo, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Giorgia De Santi, Francesca Fini, Nicola Fornoni, Fenia Kotsopoulou, La Saula, Boris Nieslony, Sara Simeoni, VestAndPage, Maite Weins, Susanne Weins. Original still images by Marcel Sparmann, Fenia Kotsopoulou, daz disley, VestAndPage, and Douglas Quin.
more info: www.stratafilm.de
#TextMe_FluffyLibrary // ”DEVIANT MONSTERS”
January 25, 2019
Occupy Atopos - Fluffy Library art residency
ATOPOS CVC - FLUFFY LIBRARY || 25 JANUARY 2019 | Athens (GREECE)
website: http://atopos.gr/textme_fluffylibrary_residency-deviant-monsters/
blog: https://fluffyresidency.blogspot.com
Fluffy and Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou invited Fenia Kotsopoulou and Daz Disley to keep each other company inside Fluffy Library for 7 days and to discover various secret aspects of Fluffy itself.
What could you find out if you sleep in Fluffy and cuddle with the pink little horse for 7 days? What secrets will Fluffy share with you and what kind of stories pop-up from the library and become reality during the night? And when you ask for bedtime stories, will you hear the voice of Fluffy itself·before you fall asleep?
Every day they discover more and more : during the nights, hairy deviances dance and masculine fairies whisper fairytales.
On Friday 25 January from 8:00 p.m. we invite you into a performative audiovisual get-together, with video by CUNTCINEMA and new fuzzy friends of Fluffy. CUNTCINEMA is the continuation of VULVOgraphy, the creation of a portable tiny cinema, which aims to display movies about identity, gender, body, shame and crisis.
SCENTS OF EVANESCENCE
x-24 2018
x-church || 14-15 July 2018 |Gainsborough (UK)
website: http://www.slumgothic.co.uk/
"SCENTS OF EVANESCENCE is a solo exhibition in the Chateaux Marcus, during the 24 hours festival x-24 in x-church.
The first 20 anthotypes (10cm x 15cm) of the on going project and text of personal memories gathered after the one-to-one photographic session were displayed in the shed. More about the project here.
ACTS OF (UN)PLUCKING
Sofa ArtResidency
F-L-A-T 5 || 16 May 2018 | Nottingham (UK)
website: https://f-l-a-t-5.tumblr.com
For her Sofa Residency at F-L-A-T-5, artist Fenia Kotsopoulou will blend acts of courage and acts of removal, creating the ground for investigating body and shame. The residency will be an opportunity to experimentally explore issues around body-hair and other societally-unwanted features of our physical experience – those which give rise to feelings of shame. On the 16th of May the first outputs of the residency will be displayed in an interactive installation at F-L-A-T 5.
WHAT BEAUTY FEELS LIKE
Small Group Show by SARC (Slumgothic Artist Resident Curator)group
x-church || 18 November 2017, Gainsborough (UK)
website: http://www.slumgothic.co.uk/
Solo exhibition inside a shed located in x-church, Gainsborough 2017, part of the Small Group Show by SARC (Slumgothic Artist Resident Curator)group.
A video instalation- screening of two video works: "F" (2017)and " What Beauty Feels Like" (2015).
Photo exhibition of the series: "DEVIANT WOMEN".
STATIONS OF UNBECOMING
CALA fest 2017 (Contemporary Actions Loose Aesthetics)
Museum of the City and the Territory of Cori || 20-22 July 2017 | Cori (IT)
website: http://calafestival.com/
A video and photography exhibition which brings together different aspects of Fenia Kotsopoulou's cross disciplinary practice. The exhibition is designed based on three audio-visual stations, with the aim of offering a multi-layered experience and understanding of the creative process emerging from the attentiveness to the Body as message and messenger at the same time.
Station #1
"Deviant Women" (self-portrait || video performance): Body as site of (de)construction of female identity and constant place of un(becoming).
Station #2
"Becoming Camera" (video & photography performance || installation): The symbolic gesture of removing the lens and separating it from the body of the camera opens new possibilities to revisit the process of image making and display from a different perspective.
Station #3
"Responding to b(ORDER)" in collaboration with Daz Disley. (video & photo installation). An audio-visual response to the on going state of limbo and crisis, dominating the socio-political context which surrounds us.
BECOMING CAMERA
University of Lincoln
LPAC || 30 May 2015 | Lincoln (UK)
website: http://feniak.wixsite.com/vulvography/performanceinstallation
An installation in which the space was designed based on five stations with the aim of offering a multi-layered experience and unerstanding of the creative process emerging from my research. Each station displayed visual traces of the project : video, photographs, vulvographs, artifacts and the resultant prototype - the “V(ulv)amera”.
In the meantime a photoperformance was taking place in which the visitors had the possibility to become participants in the vulvographic image-making process.