WORK
Where are the limits of individualism and how is it possible to achieve balances between collectivity and individual longings?Maria Ikonomopoulou continuously explores such issues with her work, blending photography with a range of materials traditionally related to Folk Art.
In an ongoing series of works Ikonomopoulou alters photographs that she has been collecting over the years: athletes, politicians, film stars or common people are being cut out of the original context and worked over. In ‘spaces between us’ embroideries fill the negative spaces between two or more photographed subjects, whereas in ‘looking through’ the subjects are cut out, in an attempt to re-evaluate the original spaces in-between.
During commissions Ikonomopoulou has been doing in public spaces for several years, she kept record of all the names of people that have participated in her projects. These names reappear in her new works, installations and photoworks, as paper cut outs and hanwritten texts that become texture in a special way.