Yota Argyropoulou

Yota Argyropoulou is an actress/performer, director and writer.

She was born in Αthens and studied Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, and History of Art at the University of East London. She has directed "ALEXA", with the support of Onassis Air and KAAITHEATRE, and "YOUTHQUAKE", which was presented at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival 2022.

Her first play “HOTEL” was selected among the 17 finalists in Berliner Festspiele 2017 at the Theatertreffen’s Stückemarkt. She has also written “Looking for Holden Caulfield,” a theatrical adaptation of “The Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger (Οnassis Youth Festival, 2016), the theatre performance "Blink,"(Ibsen Festival 2016/National Theatre of Oslo), and co-written an adaptation of “Ghosts” (Αthens & Epidaurus Festival, 2018). She has run workshops on theatre, performance, and poetry and she collaborates in designing artistic education programs with the art space TAVROS. She also participated in the on-line festival of Ars Electronica 2021, in MIRfestival 2021.

She created the solo long-durational performance "One Person at a Time" for the exhibition 'As One', organized by the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI) and NEON at the Benaki Museum in Αthens, and she was invited to participate in the “watch & talk” residency at Zürcher Theater Spektakel.

Co-founder of blindspot theatre group, she has performed and contributed artistically in: “Hedda Gabler” (Οnassis Stegi, 2015), “HOTEL” (Αthens School of Fine Arts, 2015, and Dimitria Festival, 2016), "X-Tokio" (Apo Mixanis Theatre and Theaterlandschaft Südeuropa 2015 at Theatre an der Ruhr), among others. She has performed in theatrical productions in England, Spain, Italy, and Greece in plays such as Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" (Ophelia), Strindberg’s "The Storm" (Gerda), Martin Crimp’s "Attempts on Her Life," and in the performance "An Oak Tree" directed by Tim Crouch. She played in the feature films "Before Midnight" by Richard Linklater, "Luton" by Michalis Konstantatos, in the film installation "The Airport" by John Akomfrah, and in the film "All the Pretty Little Horses" by Michalis Konstantatos —all of which were screened in renounced international film festivals

Yota Argyropoulou is a participant of The Critical Practices Program of Οnassis AiR 2019-20 and of the Tailor-made Residencies program 2023-24.

My visits to the Οnassis AiR space started much earlier than the residency period for which I was selected, much earlier than the Critical Practices Spring Program. The reason for my attraction and constant return to the site was and remains the same: its energy, its vision, the desire for change and research, the belief in experimentation and the exploration of new horizons, the emphasis on the human value, the daily effort to self-improve and contribute to a community that is being built before our eyes.

I started my residency full of ideas and with a craving to meet peοple I do not know, to re-introduce myself to peοple I did not “really” know and to explore the way in which I would like to start a new path as an artist, parallel to the path I am already following.

Apart from the Οnassis AiR team, I had the good fortune to meet and work closely with two mentors/playwrights on my artistic idea, Miguel Angel Melgares and Igor Dobričić. The pandemic imposed its own flow on the progression of the residency and, thus, I continued to work online with both the Οnassis AiR team and my two mentors, who were based in Amsterdam and Berlin respectively. The development of an artistic concept was the reason and occasion of our online meetings, but, while we were fervently discussing ideas, philosophical implications, artistic practices, contemporary artists, my ideas and the script that I delivered each time, in the background of our individual screens appeared our partners, our children, and us having our good and bad days due to the quarantine and the fear of the pandemic.

The result: the beginning of a project, ALEX(A). On the occasion of the residency’s Open Studio Day, when we got out of quarantine and returned to the space, I acquired Alexa, an object of artificial intelligence, and started rehearsing with it, initiating discussions and inventing scripts. I chose a room in the house of Οnassis AiR to rehearse and then do the performative presentation of the project. I invited a teenager to participate in the project’s performance and I created a setting for the presentation made with simple objects and materials I found on site.

On the night of the presentation, just before we started, coming through the window we heard the sounds from the demonstrations taking place in the center of Αthens in favor of the right to march. With this echo in the background —another sign, like many others that we constantly encountered with my mentors and which connected us to the project we were working on— the presentation began. It was the result of my research during the time of my residency on ideas such as technology, democracy, contemporary Greece, the revolutionary nature of adolescents, the vision of youth and the frustration of adulthood, demonstrations, police violence, the confusion of our political identity, the fear of death, artificial intelligence, etc.

In the summer, during August, I spoke with one of my mentors online about the presentation and he told me that he felt like the “godfather” of my project. I thought about this for many days after and it made me smile. He was right. On the occasion of this residency, through this project and our meetings, wonderful new connections were made that feed us and unite us in the present and the future.

Mentors/Dramaturges: Igor Dobričić, Miguel Angel Melgares