Peep Show: Despina Stokou

Despina Stokou gets bodied. Her work deals with gender roles and identity issues, as well as the underlying sexuality in almost anything. Maybe that’s also the foremost reason why she has been included in the Peep Show this Friday in Tape Modern Berlin. RSVP to the event here.

Where do you get inspiration from for your art?

My work deals with the deconstruction of the artist’s image.  My main is pre occupation is the study and inversion of the narrative plots in popular culture in general (films/comics/literature/tv and web ) and in the art scene in particular (artist persona, life style, communication and self marketing strategies)

What do you do in Berlin?

Parallel to my work as an artist, or maybe you can’t say parallel as this is the process of my work as an artist, I produce exhibitions, and edit Pigs -Guide for independent spaces in Berlin www.bpigs.com . Latest projects include THE CURATORS BATTLE I -Carson Chan vs Aaron Moulton, PIGS SPEED PORTFOLIO VIEWING, D12-a series of 6 alter ego shows, BARBAR- a group show of artists working in bars and MADONNA PSYCHO SLUT- a women show.

What piece are you showing at Tape Modern this Friday?

I am showing a canvas piece called “Dear Gallery” and a series of smaller collages-appopriations of playboy and playgirl magazines called “From Shadow Madow to Bio Rio”

Why exactly this piece?

“Dear Gallery” is a multi layered text collage from the tones of emails I have received as a “gallerist”  first through the artist initiative Apply softly and later through Grimmuseum from artists seeking representation. Collecting all these emails I could not bring myself to delete and going through them later on, I don’t know…through the initial irritation and pity for their naivity I started hearing a kind of prayer or better an ever repeated mandra like question. I combined these emails with advertisements cut out from magazines of the 80s, a time when advertisement seem  to have all the answers..

The series of small collages are produced on playboy and playgirl posters, mostly also from the 80s- my own “age of innocence”. Playboy posters are maybe the epitomy of dream fabrication, of popular narrative. I like to use this “surface”  to exercise in free-styling verse.

Credits: “Shadow Madow to Bio Rio”  2011 2×2 framed 21x30cm; Artist Portrait; Shadow Madow 2011 framed 21x30cm mixed media on magazine paper