L'appartement 22

0 EXPEDITIONS | رحلات

1 ACTUALITÉS | EVENTS | مستجدات

2 EXPOSITIONS | معارض

3 PRODUCTION | Collection | أعمال

4 ARCHIVE & BIOGRAPHIES l وثائق

5 RESIDENCES | إقامات

6 PERFORMANCES / INTERVENTIONS عروض ومداخلات

7 TEXTES | Debats | نصوص | chroniques | قراءات وحوارات

8 LINKS | Thanks | شكرآ

 

Inscription à la Newsletter

L’appartement 22,
279 avenue Mohamed V,
MA-10000 Rabat,
T +212663598288,
Residency | Georgia Kotretsos, "Karfi"

mercredi 1er janvier 2014

Georgia Kotretsos is the artist-in-residence at L’appartment22, Rabat, from 15 December 2013 to 15 January 2014. It is Kotretsos’ first time in Morocco but she has followed the program of the space and the path of its founder, Abdellah Karroum, since 2007. At the end of her residency, L’appartement 22 will host an exhibition of work produced during her stay in Morocco (15 January - 28 February 2014). In Rabat, Kotretsos will conduct research on the city’s independent art spaces and museums, while looking for emblematic images and artworks, in relation to their surroundings, and their audience. For the artist, this approach stimulates her art practice and leads to new works and inquiries.

In her work, Kotretsos studies liberating and anarchic approaches to art viewing. She has created an interdisciplinary body of work in an effort to support her belief that art reception is subjective and that audience members are accountable for their art knowledge. Her practice is research based and whether it manifests as an artwork, an interview, or an audio recording, it always encourages speculative approaches to how art knowledge is produced.

For L’appartment22, the artist is working on a photography-based project entitled KARFI (Greek : Kαρφί). In Greek, KARFI literally means nail but the word is also layered with metaphorical and playful connotations that draw attention to elements of our surroundings that otherwise would have escaped us. When personified, it is about the one who tells on others.

Kotretsos recently founded the collective Women With Talents (WWT) along with Athens based visual artist, Natasha Papadopoulou. Female artists may join WWT or collaborate with or propose projects to the founding members at any point. During Kotretsos’ residency at L’appartement 22, Touda Bouanani will contribute to the realization of WWT’s project in Rabat. During the final week of the residency, Kotretsos and Papadopoulou will join Bouanani for the collective’s first initiative. Spring Cleaning is a public performance first conceptualized for Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) in Athens. The version presented in Morocco will be adapted to Rabat’s city center. Once again, the performance is an editorial gesture that wishes to erase, to wipe off, to cleanse instead of adding to the public sphere. It is an effort to re-introduce space and surface, a hope to excavate the recent past by only removing its outermost layer : the veil of dirt. This veil is nothing but the traces civilians leave behind. Dirt is a poignant reminder of the passing of time and the Spring Cleaning performance will attempt to unveil the dermis of the most politically charged site in the heart of Rabat, right on Mohamed V Avenue from 9 to 11 January 2014.

Georgia Kotretsos (b. 1978, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist based in Athens, Greece. Kotretsos was raised and educated in South Africa and only repatriated in 2006. She lived between Greece and the United States until 2010. She received an MFA Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a Full Merit Scholarship (2004) in the United States and a BFA from the Durban Institute of Technology, in KwaZulu Natal (2000) in South Africa.

Kotretsos has had five solo exhibitions and has participated in more than sixty exhibitions in Greece, South Africa, and the United States. She has been an artist-in-residence at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse in association with the University of Haute Alsace (2013), the Arteles Residency Program in Finland (2011), the Summer Studio Program Residency in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010), andshe was accepted to attend the ISCP Residency in New York.

Parallel to her studio practice, Kotretsos co-founded Boots Contemporary Art Space, St. Louis MO, USA (2006-10) where she had the opportunity to work with many emerging as well as established professionals. Furthermore, she founded Boot Print , a publication dedicated to contemporary art and published by Boots, where she served as the editor-in-chief. For three years 2009-2013 she was a columnist for the PBS Arts feature Art:21 in New York, with her monthly column entitled Inside the Artist’s Studio. Since March 2013, this column has found its new home on LABKULTUR, Germany.

Karfi, Georgia Kotretsos