The Inspire Award 2021 in Stefania Strouza
Greek artist Stefania Strouza will be awarded the Inspire 2021 Award by the MOMus-Experimental Arts Center for her project entitled “That of the jade skirt».
The Inspire Award, which accompanied by a cash prize of 3,000 euros, is awarded under the Inspire Project to a visual artist, regardless of age or nationality, for work already granted during the workshop or residence to the world and is distinguished for its conception, originality, reflection and relevance to the space in which has been presented and with whom he is potentially conversing.
Stefania Strouza was nominated for the rest due to the fact that she was paid exactly according to the situation provided by the Inspire Prize, as well as because the work she submitted appeared, in addition to artistic perfection and proven research, a close connection with place of production.
The project «That of the jade skirt» (“The one with the emerald skirt”) of Stefania Strouza consists of sculptures as well as a series of reliefs and interest rates embossed. The projects were developed during the artist-in-residence program in Mexico City with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum (March-June 2018) and presented as a cohesive body of work within the studio residency at MANA Contemporary in the USA (October 2018 -March 2019). Examining the evolution of Mexico City in relation to water, the “That of the jade skirtIt forms a narrative that begins with the special fact that the pre-Columbian city, founded on an extensive lake system, is now gradually sinking. The title refers to Chalchiuhtlicue, the female deity of rivers and childbirth, which in Aztec cosmology represents water as a vital source but also as a depiction in the form of floods. The sculptures draw morphological references from pre-Columbian maps as well as from the very architectural reality of the capital. Respectively, the materials of the works have environmental symbols, “capturing” the gradual fluctuations and transformations of the landscape from the liquid to the dry and from the natural to the anthropogenic. The “That of the jade skirtAssociated with a broader eco-feminist approach, he continued a fantastic and material collection on the relationship between water, urban overdevelopment and climate change.
The presence of the work of Stefania Strouza and the acquaintance of the author with the audience of MOMus-Experimental Arts Center will take place in special award ceremony Inspire Prize 2021 which will take place online on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, at 18:00 with free participation of the public. The event will be accessible from the link https://bit.ly/2Xw6DBT (Meeting ID card: 833 8276 1492 / Password: 254190).
To Inspire Project is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).
A few words about Stefania Strouza
Stefania Strouza lives and works as an artist in Athens. Through the sculpture of the work he explores intercultural writers and the hybrid identities that result from the exchange of material goods and meanings over the centuries. Strouza implements their ideas through works related to the symbolic world of objects with the concepts of temporality, body and geography.
Her work has been presented in exhibitions in Greece and abroad such as: in 3the Biennale of Industrial Art, Croatia; in Pinta Miami, USA; at the Benaki Museum, Greece; at 6the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece; at a.antonopoulou.art, Greece (individual); at the Wiener Art Foundation, Austria (individual); at the Neue Galerie Innsbruck, Austria (individual); at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival 2014, Greece (individual ) · At BOZAR, Belgium · at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece among others. In 2019 he participated in the exhibition The Palace in the 4 oneTheΜThe Archaeological Museum of Mykonos after the assignment of the NEON Organization.
Strouza is the recipient of the award of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (ARTWORKS) and the National Bank (Bravio of Young Artists), among others. Participated in the Artist Hospitality Program at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, USA (2016), at the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, Germany (2016), at the Studio Residency in Mexico City on a scholarship from the Austrian Ministry of Culture (2018), at MANA Contemporary New Jersey, USA (2018), CCA Andratx, Spain (2020) and ISCP, USA (2021).
She studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (2007) and completed her postgraduate studies in the Environmental Art department of the Edinburgh College of Art (2010) and in the Textual Sculpture department of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (2016). She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Architectural Engineering of the University of Thessaly.