Maria Mavropoulou. Wallpaper

 

Maria Mavropoulou
Stats, from the “Family Portraits” series, 2019
Print on wallpaper, variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist

A large part of Maria Mavropoulou’s research for the “Family Portraits” series presented in the exhibition was based on Internet user statistics. It is almost impossible to comprehend the vastness of the internet without resorting to numbers and percentages. The mind boggles as soon as we realise the meaning, the sheer size of the numbers, and the speed by which they grow. However, love, tenderness and intimacy are not measurable quantities. But they become measurable when mediated by technology, which considers human behaviour predictable and where algorithms do not take into account the subjectivity of each existence, just like every other aspect of our lives online. In this new economy, emotions are quantified and make us vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation and peer pressure.

Maria Mavropoulou uses mainly photography while her work expands to new forms of the photographic image, such as VR and screen captured images. Her research focuses on the new realities created by the connectible devices and the contradictions between the physical and the digital spaces that we inhabit. Her aesthetics explore the boundary line between plausibility or not, potentiality and non-potentiality, random and constructed. Playing with the perception of viewers she aspires to question the role and power of photography in an era that is dominated by it. Her first VR project “Family Portraits” has been awarded at the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (2019).

Biography

Maria Mavropoulou lives and works in Athens. She completed her MFA studies at Athens School of Fine Arts in 2018, from where she attained her BA in 2014. Her work has been presented in the Culturescapes festival (Basel, CH, 2017), Athens Photo Festival (EL, 2016), Krakow Photomonth (PL, 2016), Athens Biennale 5 to 6 (EL, 2015, 2017), 5th Thessaloniki Biennale (EL, 2015), Mois de la photo (Paris, FR, 2014), European month of photography (Budapest, HU, 2014), Fotoistanbul (Istanbul, TR, 2014) and Benaki museum (Athens, EL, 2014). She is a member of the Depression Era collective of artists who inhabit the urban and social landscapes of the crisis and post-crisis in Greece.

https://www.mariamavropoulou.com/

 

 

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