Anna Papathanasiou: Incubator chambers

I am researching the boundaries of the absence of a stereotypical sense of identity as shaped through factors such as gender, weight, sexuality, social class, and more, trying to reach a point where the possibility of rejection due to identity features itself, is foreseen and therefore projected and neutralized. My body is a medium available at all times given, easy to transform and be objectified. Exploring its limitations and a relatively big spectrum of options, it allows me to create new ways of reading myself and the people around me, from a literal to a metaphorical and sometimes metaphysical level. I find it quite easy to detach from my persona and, by treating myself in general as a lifeless material due to my Asperger’s atypical nature, I want to further explore and create a vocabulary of new imagery that somehow unveils another aspect of life that I seem to ignore up to this point. I do not recognize myself in my work, it is more like creating fragments and putting them side by side in order to complete the bigger picture that I cannot yet perceive. Editing elements and trying to figure out the order of things. That is the route of getting to see things more clearly, the same way I treat the sense of identity in others – that is, unintentionally and abstractly. In my practice, I am seeking practical ways while using the sense of identity as a tool, an objectified material filtered through physical and emotional exhaustion as well as using transfiguration as a way of annihilation. I am drawn to this specific topic of research because of the profound need I have developed to construct a more complete performative piece, based on the theme of the fluid collective identity through the prism of the physical body, creating a new interface using A.I. and coding. The tools that I am going to incorporate include motion, coding, lighting, and the combination of my physical limitations juxtaposed with that of a machine. The connection between the body and the constructed code system of functions will be the only element telling the difference between the states of being alone versus being profoundly lonely.

Creator's note

Anna Papathanasiou, January 2023