Maria Theodoraki's work most often takes the form of films, installations, photographs or drawings and usually involves text (through titles or otherwise). Maria has been working with photography, systematically, since 1996. However it will be misleading to present A way to sculpture, 2015 as a photographic work. The images and the title situate the work between mediums, and divert attention from the material object to the process of making. This shift is further encouraged by Maria's remark that: “A way to sculpture is a series of photographs of sculptures that don’t exist”.
Taking into account Maria's practice as a whole, I understand this orchestrated diversion as reflecting for once more, her concern with the antagonism between historicity and spectacle.
Maria Theodoraki was born in Greece in 1977 and has lived in England since 2005.
She studied BA Visual Communication (Animation and Moving Image) at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, UCE, Birmingham and has taken classes in photography in the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography in New York. She studied MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree at Universidade Nova de Lisboa within the research program "New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art" (NACCA).
Her solo exhibitions include: For the Space Between us (2014) and 3 (2012) at Palagkas, London; Reel Around The Fountain, JT Gallery, London (2011); This Is To Be Looked At, Banner Repeater, London (2011).
Group exhibitions include: Slip, Städtische Galerie, Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany (2015); Multiplicities, Art Seen, Nicosia (2015); Light Writing at Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery, Sheffield (2011); Seeing In The Dark at CIRCA Projects, Sunderland (2011); and American Mountains at Auto Italia, London (2010). Her video work was also screened in film festivals including “VIDEOEX International Experimental Film & Video Festival“, Zurich, Switzerland; “Moving Silence”, Goethe Institut, Athens, Greece; “Torino Film Festival doc“, Turin, Italy and “7th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival“, Athens, Greece.
She was nominated for the DESTE prize for Contemporary Art 2013.
In 2014 Theodoraki started a doctoral research project on the institutional display of contemporary art and custodianship ethics at the Chelsea College of Arts, CCW, University of the Arts London.
