Katerina Kokkinaki

Katerina Kokkinaki | Avatar Portrait | 2024

You hold a PhD in Space and Visual Arts. How has your academic research influenced your artistic practice?

It helped me in two ways. Firstly, it showed me how to examine my ideas in a deeper way. It taught me how to interpret my thoughts, to connect my inner world with cultural motifs and how to recognize patterns in my work. The second thing was an issue that I discovered during my dissertation: eco-learning and deep ecology. The movement of deep ecology simply confirmed my attitude towards the world, that all living beings have the same value, but also the importance of non-living beings in our lives. And this is one of the basic elements that permeates a serious amount of my work.

Katerina Kokkinaki | Connected | 2024

Your project #this_is_no_eden presents an imagined Eden shaped by human choices. What personal experiences inspired this theme?

Most of this work was created during COVID period. On a personal note, the period of the pandemic, when isolation took place, became a point of discontinuity, and it showed me a new reality that I had no choice but to accept. I followed it becoming a tele-presence at work, with friends and parents, and that’s when I realized that an era had ended. Post-humanism was there, signifying a change of course for all of humanity, but also the transition to the digital age. During this pause in real life, I had time to realize the transformation of an individual’s identity within a modern, complex, and constantly changing environment. Transcending human nature, extending life expectancy, merging humans and computers, revising human subjectivity.

All of these redefine the new concept of what it means to be human, overturning our established ideas about existence and the place of the individual in the universe. It looks like something different, strange, utopian, absurd, and dystopian at the same time. The pandemic period contributed dramatically to the atmosphere of my paintings, to this rich and artificial experience excess, encased in small and isolated realities, in an allusive way.

Katerina Kokkinaki | This Is Not Eden | 2024

In your paintings, there is a strong connection to childhood and memory. How do these elements shape the atmosphere of your work?

The reference to childhood has to do with the child we carry within us as a psychological identity, which is not bypassed but carried over and relived until the end. Thus, the characters in the works have the gaze of maturity, compassion, awareness, or even complicity, but always through their youthful icon. After all, in the future (according to post & hyper-humanization) thanks to the advances of biotechnology, individuals will be able to avoid aging and maybe death. We are talking about the vanity of human existence, but also an insult to the superiority of human imperfection.

The figures in your works often appear both close and distant, familiar yet otherworldly. How do you approach the representation of relationships and identity?

In today’s world, individuals constantly interact with virtual entities in virtual environments. Life within online communities consists of a psychological reality, while immersion in virtual life is part of disembodiment. Relationships are in crisis. All relationships, not only with others but also with one’s inner self. Emotions are becoming scarce, now they exist in a measurable form, no one can be very happy, joyful, in love, sad, it is better for all to feel neutral.

Katerina Kokkinaki | False Love | 2024

Biophilic and tropical motifs appear frequently in your art. What draws you to this imagery?

In an extended reality, natural entities are integrated into virtual and real environments, creating an inclusive world. Post-humanism transcends boundaries and integrates them into an open, holistic system without dividing lines and differences.

Nevertheless, ecological harmony seems like a distant dream, and so these works are dominated by a disconnect between the individual and the natural microcosm. Nature is artificial, the space is not real but a staged setting. There is no naturalness because I do not paint naturalness. There is nothing self-evident or given. We are talking about a virtual reality with some notes from the plant and animal alphabet.

Katerina Kokkinaki | Where The Crabs Sing | 2024

Your statement mentions a “climate of contrived bliss” where emotions may be forgotten. Do you see this as a reflection of today’s society and technology?

The rise of non-relationship has transformed individuals into feeling more like unique entities than belonging to relational networks. Digital isolation transforms individuals into empty, emotionless manifestations of people. An “avatar” that states emotions, but ultimately it is doubtful whether it feels them too.

Katerina Kokkinaki | Girl And Haku | 2024

How do you balance the poetic, almost surreal qualities of your art with the critical commentary it contains?

Balance comes through implication. Nothing is clearly or precisely true. Thus, individuals can play roles or personalize social and political ideas. A sense of bliss prevails, but it is deeply critical and thought-provoking. Many artists, especially directors, work in this way, using implication in order to raise questions about existential issues. Consider Eric Rohmer, Luca Guadagnino, Lars Von Trier, and others.