GEORGIA KOTRETSOS (b. 1978, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist and researcher based in Athens, Greece. She moved to South Africa in her early teens while the abolition of apartheid was underway. Kotretsos holds 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 Degree from the Durban Institute of Technology, in KwaZulu Natal, (2000) in South Africa.
With her work, she critiques the conformity of seeing by studying, proposing and practicing liberating and anarchic approaches of looking at art in an effort to support that seeing is site-specific and spectatorial emancipation the source of our art knowledge. Through her research-based practice, she encourages speculative approaches on how knowledge is and/or could be produced.
In 2016 Kotretsos was nominated for the FAENA ART Prize ; in 2015 was a recipient of the NEON grant for her solo entitled OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION at C9 MaximiliansForum in Munich supported the Arts & Culture Dept. of the City of Munich. In 2014 she was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize and the Follow Fluxus Residency & Grant. She has exhibited her work in Greece, as well as abroad and has had seven solo shows. In 2014 and 2015 she presented the lecture/performed entitled Socially engaged? Better, socially married! at the FIELD MEETING at the Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York; at the MediaImpact: International Festival of Activist Art in Moscow; at the FIELD MEETING Take 2: An Afterthought, collateral event 56th Venice Biennale, and at Diasporas in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2015 she was an artist-in-residence in Greece, Italy and Germany.
Her own work found to concur with her action to co-found the five-year art project Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, MO - a contemporary art laboratory (2006-10). In addition she founded and edited BootPrint (2006-10), a biannual journal made by and for artists.
Her work has been presented at: Onassis Art Center, NY; the Asian Society, NY; the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; the Tinguely Museum, Basel, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis among other institutions in Greece and abroad.
Between 2009-13 she was the columnist of the Inside the Artist’s Studio for the PBS Arts Feature, Art21 Magazine. In 2014 her column was published on LABKULTUR.TV in Germany.
Her latest permanent site-specific installation may be found at the Minos Beach art hotel, in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, entitled 4 Cents: On Show For 500 Years supported by the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation .
With her work, she critiques the conformity of seeing by studying, proposing and practicing liberating and anarchic approaches of looking at art in an effort to support that seeing is site-specific and spectatorial emancipation the source of our art knowledge. Through her research-based practice, she encourages speculative approaches on how knowledge is and/or could be produced.
In 2016 Kotretsos was nominated for the FAENA ART Prize ; in 2015 was a recipient of the NEON grant for her solo entitled OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION at C9 MaximiliansForum in Munich supported the Arts & Culture Dept. of the City of Munich. In 2014 she was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize and the Follow Fluxus Residency & Grant. She has exhibited her work in Greece, as well as abroad and has had seven solo shows. In 2014 and 2015 she presented the lecture/performed entitled Socially engaged? Better, socially married! at the FIELD MEETING at the Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York; at the MediaImpact: International Festival of Activist Art in Moscow; at the FIELD MEETING Take 2: An Afterthought, collateral event 56th Venice Biennale, and at Diasporas in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2015 she was an artist-in-residence in Greece, Italy and Germany.
Her own work found to concur with her action to co-found the five-year art project Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, MO - a contemporary art laboratory (2006-10). In addition she founded and edited BootPrint (2006-10), a biannual journal made by and for artists.
Her work has been presented at: Onassis Art Center, NY; the Asian Society, NY; the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; the Tinguely Museum, Basel, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis among other institutions in Greece and abroad.
Between 2009-13 she was the columnist of the Inside the Artist’s Studio for the PBS Arts Feature, Art21 Magazine. In 2014 her column was published on LABKULTUR.TV in Germany.
Her latest permanent site-specific installation may be found at the Minos Beach art hotel, in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, entitled 4 Cents: On Show For 500 Years supported by the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation .