ON ON BORDER: IDENTITIES – GNNR (Gender, Nature, Nationalities, Revolutions), 2021
Long-Durational Performance Workshop & Exhibition.
A cross-border performance project developed between Odesa (Ukraine) and Athens (Greece), focusing on identity as process rather than fixed structure.
Taking as a conceptual starting point Homi K. Bhabha’s notion that identity is never a priori but always in formation, the project approached gender, nationality, nature and revolution as fluid and historically embedded constructs.
Through a three-day intensive Long-Durational Performance Workshop led by Vera Iona Papadopoulou and organised by the Museum of Modern Art Odessa (МСИО), five emerging Ukrainian artists developed site-responsive endurance-based works rooted in personal identity inquiry. The process emphasized embodiment, threshold states and the testing of spiritual and physical limits.
The performances were first presented live at МСИО in Odessa and later exhibited as mixed-media documentation in Athens, creating a dialogue between live action and archival trace.
ON THE BORDER: IDENTITIE(S) – GNNR
Workshop: 10–12 September 2021
Performance Exhibition: 17 October 2021, МСИО – Odesa, Ukraine
Mixed-Media Group Exhibition: 17 November – 30 December 2021, K85 – Athens, Greece
Organised by: Museum of Modern Art Odessa (МСИО) & IST (Institute of Contemporary Art)
Curated by: Anna Stroulia & Vera Iona Papadopoulou
Performers: Evgen Bal, Hanna Bakhtadze, Alisa Larant, Maryna Semenkova, Veronika Skobenina
Just A Stage, 2021
elektron.art
Online performance residency.
Developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Just A Stage functioned as a virtual performance platform bringing together artists from different countries who created and performed simultaneously from their homes.
Within a shared online stage environment, geographically dispersed performers co-existed in real time, forming a collective performance across continents. The domestic space became stage; the screen became site.
As Performance Mentor and Artistic Advisor, Vera Iona Papadopoulou guided the development of these works, encouraging artists to approach performance as an evolving environment rather than a fixed event. The mentorship focused on spatial dramaturgy within digital space, durational awareness, and the construction of audience experience — including the design of virtual entrance and exit points.
The residency investigated how presence, collectivity and spectatorship could be redefined under conditions of isolation.
Platform: Just A Stage – elektron.art
Role: Performance Mentor / Artistic Advisor
(-)FE MALE – Home Performance Art Festival, 2020
(Conceived during the first global lockdown, (-)FE MALE – Home Performance Art Festival relocated performance from institutional space to the domestic sphere, reframing the home as both stage and political site.
Under conditions of isolation, female* artists presented live-streamed and recorded works created within their own living environments. Domesticity — traditionally coded as private, intimate and gendered — was reactivated as a space of production, visibility and resistance. Bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms became performative terrains where the body negotiated presence within digital mediation.
The festival embraced multiplicity: diverse geographies, mediums and aesthetic languages coexisted within a shared online structure. Theatre, sound, movement, spoken word and video operated in parallel, generating a decentralized yet collectively held event. Rather than a unified curatorial narrative, the project foregrounded plurality — allowing each artist’s position toward gender, embodiment and visibility to emerge autonomously.
Within the constraints of online transmission, the screen functioned as both barrier and connector. Intimacy was amplified; distance became structural. The festival examined how embodied presence could persist, fragment and multiply within digital space.
(*Including artists who identify as female and position themselves beyond gender binaries.)
(-)FE MALE Home performance art festival
Curator: Vera Iona Papadopoulou
Festival Dates: April 1–3, 2020
Format: Online / Live Streaming & Video Performances
Somatic Performance, 2014–2015
Performance-based course / live performative format.
Somatic Performance was conceived as a hybrid structure between workshop and live artwork, investigating identity through embodied exposure.
Participants entered the space under specific instructions, selected a position and sat in silence, already inhabiting a performative condition. This initial phase functioned as a structured pre-performance: the body was positioned, observed and framed.
Once the lights shifted, participants moved into a second space where a guided workshop unfolded. Drawing from performance art practices, mantra-based exercises and theatrical game structures, the session invited participants to observe themselves in changing emotional and psychological states, asking — implicitly and collectively — “Who am I?”
Throughout the process, external viewers could witness the unfolding seminar from outside the immediate action. The workshop therefore operated simultaneously as internal exploration and public event. Learning became exposure; self-inquiry became spectacle.
The work examined attention, vulnerability and the construction of identity within a temporary collective. Performance functioned not as representation, but as a method of self-investigation under conditions of visibility.
Role: Course Author & Performance Facilitator
Presented at:
Sokol Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Moscow, Russia
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia
