Martha Panagiotopoulou (she/her)
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Martha Panagiotopoulou (b.1991, Athens, Greece) is a multi-media artist, whose academic background is in architecture (NTUA) and is currently completing an MFA in Fine Arts at the Glasgow School of Art. Her work has been exhibited both outdoors and in indoors spaces like GoMA. She has recently been awarded the NEON scholarship prize and her work was shortlisted and will be included at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
STATEMENT
Through a multidisciplinary approach, Martha’s artistic practice revolves around the possibilities of the psyche/soma during the contemporary era, when both human and other-than-human entities are found in a fragile and precarious situation. Her inspirations derive from the analysis of myths, rituals, customs and scientific facts seen through hydro-feminist, eco-feminist, eco-psychological and animistic approaches. Driven by an anxiety about fragile tomorrows, her works seek for liquid, matriarchal, inter-species, symbiotic worlds as a way of saving and healing a damaged planet with radical love, care and fearlessness.
HYDR . O . CENE, 2021
HYDR . O . CENE is a fictional, future room setting where all that remains from humanity are crystallized household objects. In the fish bowl on the table, one finds the only living organisms: ‘sea-monkeys’ (Artemia NYOS), an artificial hybrid shrimp breed which through cryptobiosis can live in extreme dryness and come back to life once sufficiently hydrated. HYDR . O . CENE is a place that brings together things that are unrelated to one another. It is a place in between land and water, in between a common living room and the bottom of the ocean, in between nature and culture, which depicts the fragility of our homes, our surroundings, our belongings, ourselves.
HYDR . O . CENE
SOFT SAVAGES, 2021
Soft Savages is a series of works named after stars and planetary objects, found in the Hydra constellation. It is an imaginary place where nature and culture merge with the formation of crystals creating bonds between them. Organic and made materials coexist and interwind in the presence of currently endangered animals in the form of plastic animal toys. Soft Savages is the picture of a future memory of an interspecies Hydro-cene, where all sort of fragile things are brought together in a salty, watery setting consisting of the remains of contemporary household items and other objects found in/around our homes.
SOFT SAVAGES: β HYDRAE
SOFT SAVAGES: NGC 3242 GHOST OF JUPITER
SOFT SAVAGES: 27 HYDRAE
SOFT SAVAGES: MESSIER 48
HYDRAHEARTS, 2021
7.11min video & audio
HYDRAHEARTS is attempting to challenge anthropocentric and patriarchal perspectives, that are dominant in the contemporary western world, by bringing in concepts of eco-feminism, eco-psychology and animism. The work is exploring liquid futures of matriarchal, inter-species, symbiotic worlds as a way of surviving and healing a damaged planet with radical love, care and fearlessness.
Four women of the same family, each of which symbolically embodies a sea creature: halcyon, sea turtle (endangered), moon jellyfish and sea daffodil (endangered), are found at the edge of land, where a river enters the ocean and are surrounded by water and orca sounds.
Orca’s are endangered species that live in matriarchal societies. Water, is a universal solvent, and therefore the ultimate medium which both physically, as well as metaphorically, ties together all kinds of entities. The liquid solvent which can slowly dissolve the boundaries between human and more-than-human worlds.
A setting one can find in any living room, is now found within a liquid environment, slightly submerged into the sea. A space in-between land and ocean, in-between culture and chaos, in-between human and animal. A dream-like scene which brings the everyday human life event of gathering around a table, in water.
Written & Directed by: Martha Panagiotopoulou.
Director of Photography: Panos Astor Koffas.
Video & Audio edit by: Panos Astor Koffas.
Performed by:
Elli Stergiou | Moon Jellyfish
Ntiana Tzortzini | Sea Turtle
Aria Tzortzini | Halcyon
Martha Panagiotopoulou | Sea Daffodil
& Rocky.
Spoken by:
Martha Panagiotopoulou | Ocean & Oceanides
Wei Zhou | Halcyon
Athanasia Panagiotopoulou | Sea Turtle
Elli Stergiou | Moon Jellyfish
Jina Song | Sea Daffodil
Waves & Orkas.
Poems by: Martha Panagiotopoulou.
Sculptures by: Martha Panagiotopoulou.
Costumes by: Various designers, from performers’ personal wardrobes.
(Un)inhabitable Spring Tide, 2020
(Un)inhabitable Spring Tide was an offering to the Ocean, made in December 2020. The piece was a New Year’s gift to the sea and its creatures. It can no longer be located, but it’s purpose was to serve as a hiding place for octopuses or other tender entities. The project was my first attempt to create a work that is not meant be experienced by humans, but by animals.
