Fenia Kotsopoulou

I am a neurodeviant, restless cross-disciplinary artist. Through a process-driven, hybrid, and rhizomatic practice I experiment, play seriously, deviate, fail, pull-apart, create ephemeral images, attempt to disrupt the gaze, build fluid bridges, (un)tangle, imagine, remember, trace, seek more questions, touch the (un)known, (day)dream…alone and with others.

I am a UK-resident, Greek-born, award-winning, cross-disciplinary artist (performance (art), dance, video, photography) holding an MFA in Choreographing Live Art from the University of Lincoln (UK), a BA Honours in Dance from the National Dance Academy of Rome (Italy) and a BA in Italian Language and Literature from the Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki (Greece).

Moving and still image became a dominant and persistent components of my artistic practice. All my inspiration comes from the daily life, encounters, observation of interpersonal relationships, abandoned places, gender performativity, feminist approaches on female subjectivity and identity. Pivotal topics of recent projects include the body as gathering place of emotions and site of transformation, personal and collective memory, construction and de/construction of fe/male 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 seek collaborating with artists from different fields and different cultural backgrounds.

My  practice-led research “Vulvography: photography and performance from a female point of view” focused on the gendered nature of the performative role of the photographer whilst exploring ways to confront implied phallocentrism within the practice of photographing. Questions around the politics of gaze, the role of camera, and the affordances of the photographic object affect my orientation and experimentation with the medium.

As part of my practice,  I go back to old alternative photographic processes, as a way to question moving and still image within the frenetic visual culture we live, and to use them as a strategy to explore failures and potentialities within the medium itself.  In 2024, I received the St Hugh Award from the St Hugh’s Foundation for the arts to expand my practice regarding feminist, experimental, documentary film methodologies and processes integrating 16mm film.

As (dance) performer, producer and visual practitioner, my works and the work of close-collaborators have been shown at a wide array of festivals and art platforms, encompassing the fields of dance, experimental performance, live-art and video-art.

Since 2016 I am artist in residency at x-church (Gainsborough, UK) within a group of 10 artists, exploring the idea of “residency” in an old ex church on Ashcroft Road, Gainsborough (UK), formerly St. John the Divine Parish Church.

From 2019 to 2023, I taught and co-facilitated modules on documentation and dissemination, body in performance, and mentored artistic research projects at the Master of Performance Practices at ArtEZ University in Arnhem (Netherlands), and from 2016 to 2019 I was associate lecturer at the BA Dance at the University of Lincoln (UK)

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> Participants of La Pocha Nostra with Vest & Page : (Link)