Interview with Athina Koumparouli: Between Archaeology and Contemporary Art

Central Image: Appia 39, Chapter 2, Stratigraphy of Vessels detail, 2022

Athina Koumparouli is a conservator-restorer of antiquities and an artist-designer. She has graduated from the MSc program “Post industrial Design and Artistic Practices” at the University of Thessaly, Volos, the only Greek MSc program of this kind. Her design and artistic work is a fusion of the excavation and research practices of the archaeological and archaeognostic sector with experimentation and the surprise of contemporary creation.

The presentation of her “finds” constitutes an approach to historical change through the small scale of the exhibited work, which changes as time goes by, either by itself or by audience intervention. Her works explore the distinctive symbiosis within the field of “new ecology” that characterises the modern human-natural relationship and asks questions about our own identity.

After her recent return from Rome, where she stayed for a month, we talked with Athina Koumparouli. While she was there, she created a hybrid work, between scientific excavation and contemporary art installation, aiming to communicate with the audience.

Appia 39, Chapter 1, Excavating the excavated soil detail, 2022

What is your relationship with archaeology, and how does it relate to contemporary design materiality-wise?

I work in the field of the conservation of antiquities and at the same time in contemporary art spaces. These activities -the manual work and the fact that I witness the interaction between material culture and the natural environment- define my practice. The archaeological field is a space where these two situations merge and interact. During the excavation, nature’s effort to assimilate the material remains becomes evident. The archaeological process comes to interrupt this effort. Found artefacts contribute to the interpretation of the past, and conservators, who are called upon to restore the finds/objects to their original state, ultimately contribute materially to the narrative.

So is there a link between the historical material depository and contemporary practice? How is that signified in your work?

Objects and material culture have multiple interpretations that can change depending on how, where, when and why they are conceived and by whom. Based on this idea, I choose in my artistic practice to explore and develop different interpretations, hypothetical situations and possible combinations and explore another kind of materiality; a materiality created by the relationship between objects, their relationship with the environment they inhabit, and the emotional connections we build with them. 

My practice is the result of a research process that starts from field research in places/spaces/situations. I choose places that are in a state of transition and host special balances and peculiar interactions between culture and nature that I am interested in interpreting artistically. I combine the results of the in situ research with bibliographic references from various fields and produce what I call material narratives.

I often use organic materials and explore the properties of the materials in general - a prerequisite of conservation - but outside of the field of conservation I experiment and attempt to give them new properties both literal and figurative.

Appia 39, Chapter 2, Stratigraphy of Vessels, 2022

Would you like to tell us about your recent project “Appia 39” that took place in Rome this summer? What can a city with such an archaeological wealth offer to contemporary experimental design?

I went there for a residency, invited by the ECeC Laboratory and the archaeologist Francesca Fiano (scientific advisor of the artistic/visual project) to an ongoing excavation carried out by the University of Ferrara. The excavation was open to visitors and the request was a project that would open a dialogue with the public. The project was developed on-site during the excavation within one month. Working on an ongoing excavation and being able to incorporate all the available and unfiltered information into a visual project was a special and rare situation.

I wanted to explore the interpretation of material culture and landscape without, however, relying on pre-existing interpretations concerning the archaeology and mythology of the place or the reason why the specific location was chosen to be excavated. The work consists of three locations where I observed and finally “borrowed” the archaeological procedures/methods, thus developing a narrative that parallels the narrative of the archaeological excavation. Firstly, within the framework of what we call found objects in contemporary design, I initiated a second “excavation” in the excavated soil and was able to collect many things which I then cleaned, photographed and documented. We are talking about more modern objects or at least from the last century contained in fragments in the same soil from the excavation. Some of these finds were placed on a workbench and named future archaeology finds. These findings were the inspiration for the two next parts of the project.

More than water more than rain I need electricity, 2019, Eindhoven 

What sort of feedback did you get from the audience, that is, a whole city of people used to living among findings?

Audience participation was particularly interesting when they encountered these finds, that is, objects familiar to them yet juxtaposed with the archaeological artefacts. In the end, people started to link them to their own experiences and memories. Through these exchanges, we developed a methodology that we hope to improve and transfer to other similar places, this time in Greece. At the same time, there is a network of people dealing with these issues with an experimental approach and rejecting strict restrictions, so I hope that we will have the right conditions and flexibility to support similar ventures here.

More than water more than rain I need electricity, 2019, Eindhoven

In your work you deal a lot with the natural element and how it relates to the artificial-urban element. Is that correct? What is your connection with this world of phenomena?

My connection is primarily personal. I find natural functions very interesting. Without necessarily being able to explain why this inspires me. I tend to reduce the images and situations of the urban environment to their corresponding/analogous ones in the natural world. At the same time, conservation brings me very close to natural phenomena and the interactions of natural elements with artificial culture and its materials.

Is your work “More than water more than rain I need electricity”, exhibited in Eindhoven in 2019, such a work? A work, that is, which deals with the issue of nature and its new versions.

It’s a work about the paradoxes of the new nature. Initially, I found an industrial area which has also been declared a Natura area because some rare species live there precisely due to its polluted nature. After conducting field research, I recorded the way water was used by industry and the great changes brought to the landscape by the movement of large volumes of water and land to serve it. I focused on the relationship between water and industry and decided to communicate my position through a water fountain installation. I chose this form thinking that it contrasts the wild element of the waterfall and somewhat symbolises tamed nature. In the mechanical and non-monumental fountain of my installation, the water moves with the help of machines, while the sound of the dripping water mixes with the sound of the pumps and reinforces the idea that the natural elements have lost the metaphysical-magical status they once had and have now been turned into tools.

Appia 39, Chapter 2, Stratigraphy of Vessels, detail, 2022

In closing, do you think that artistic research and speculative design are a means to express the value of raising awareness on environmental or ecological issues?

I think I express myself through these two because in all my projects I start with a -usually- strange but real condition, that could also be imaginary. I think that by concluding a work that makes it difficult to discern between the real and the -added- imaginary element, the interest and direct or indirect participation of the audience is cultivated (i.e. a critical stance towards the ecological issue).

Athina Koumparouli was awarded for her multidimensional research in the field of visual arts, ecology, conservation and industrial speculative design from this year's ARTWORKS (Visual Arts, 2022) and is a Fellow of the Artist Support Program of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Artist’s Portrait | athinakubaruli.com/ | instagram.com