Eva Giannakopoulou grew up in Ithaca, Greece and she is currently residing with her son in Athens where she works. In the past, she has lived in Naples, Barcelona, Istanbul, Berlin and in other places depending on the circumstances.
She has directed and presented performances at various unconventional sites, including beaches, squares, rivers, parks, and impromptu stages in public space. Her work has been exhibited in museums, institutions, galleries, and festivals, including the Teatro Cine Torres Vedras and PLYFA Park (Ichthyolatry, a co-production between Greece, Portugal and Italy in the framework of the European project Stronger Peripheries, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme, GR, PT, IT, 2023), the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Thessaloniki Performance Festival, 2023), the New Museum, New York (Screen Series online, 2020), the Onassis-Stegi Foundation (Kin Baby, FUTURE N.O.W, 2021 and Kivotos Channel, 2021), the Benaki Museum (“The Same River Twice”, 2019 and “The Equilibrists”, 2016. Both curated and organized by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation), the Kultursymposium Weimar (2019), the Goethe-Institut Athen (“Weasel Dance”, 2019), the Athens Biennale AB6: ANTI (2018), the Athens Biennale AB5to6: OMONOIA (2016), the Material Art Fair (Mexico City, 2017), the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Berlin, “Autonomy Help ME!” (solo exhibition, 2015), Month of Performance Art (Berlin, 2014 and 2015), Action Field Kodra (Thessaloniki, 2012) and the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation (MIET) Thessaloniki Center (at a parallel event of the third Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2011).
She has studied History of Art in Italy, and Fine Arts in Greece under P. Charalambous and she was recipient of IKY (State Scholarships Foundation) and Vikatos scholarship for her Masters “Space Strategies” in the Art Academy Weiβensee, Berlin, graduating in 2015 with honors under A. Creischer, A. Siekmann and K. Wildner.
Eva has co-curated and co-organized numerous art projects and performative events, while in 2013-2014, she was a co-labourer of the
MPA-B (Month of Performance Art, Berlin). In 2019 she co-founded “Most Mechanics Are Crooks”, an artistic and curatorial band that aims to reclaim insincerity as a tool of progressive discourse.
Eva is a PhD candidate at the ASFA (Athens School of Fine Arts). The title of her PhD thesis is: “m-otherness. Towards an investigation of mothering voices and representations through subversive tactics”.
She has lectured in conferences, organized seminars and workshops in Universities in Greece and abroad such as the Athens School of Fine Arts, the University of Patras, the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of Florina and the Weissenßee Kunsthochschule.
Kinship, embodied practices, ecology and the symbiotic tactics between human, more than human and non-human forms of life, is the conceptual and aesthetic framework of my artistic practice. These concerns have initiated a long process of research that has generated numerous artistic projects comprising fieldwork, theoretical references, alternative dramaturgy, experimental performances and multimedia installations.
My recent artistic practice revolves around issues of “different” or “alternative” parenthood in relation to the post-human and feminist theory. Making use of fluid, maternal, embodied and performative methods, I consider myself as an observer who creates visual content in a constant “impregnable” process. Such preoccupations have motivated my interest in ecofeminism and hydrofeminism, which I encompass in my practice.
Mothering as an alternative to equality feminism, transhumanism, posthumanism and body politics has been at the epicenter of my artistic practice since 2014. From that point and on, my work focuses on the investigation of motherhood as a political act.
This personal and artistic venture has generated a series of works attempting to transform the category of the human from “within”, as well as the political, economic and social order through alternative economies and matriarchal spirituality.
As calamity shocks, hopelessness and depression multiply on planet Earth, I have recently developed a strong interest in the extra-terrestrial possibilities of habitation.