Bio

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Christos Mouchas (born 1994) studied at the British University of Sussex. His practice mainly focuses on the contemporary human condition through exploring the artist-audience relationship.

The erotic as well as pain and its transcendence are recurring themes in his works. He often utilizes audience participation, improvisation, movement, and dance as methods of challenging dominant power structures, aiming to create new forms of social and political interaction.

His works have been presented at the Art Athina, the Athens Epidaurus Festival and The Performance Shop, the Dance House Lemesos, the K-Gold Temporary Gallery, the Marina Abramović Institute, the Onassis Stegi, and the Talkin’ Heads. Moreover, he has collaborated with magazines and brands, such as AnOther, DIOR, and Harper’s Bazaar China, among others.

In 2020, he was awarded by ARTWORKS, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Fellowship Program. In 2017, Mouchas participated in the NEON Curatorial Exchange program by the Whitechapel Gallery.

Artist statement

artist-statement

CV

EXHIBITIONS

2024 Art Athina
"Happy me, happy we", parallel performance program
2020 Onassis Stegi, Athens
Onassis New Choreographers Festival 7
2019 Dance House Lemesos, Limassol
One Day Express Lab 3
2018 Athens Epidaurus Festival, Athens
The Performance Shop
2018 Talkin’ Heads, Athens
Sometimes A Wind Blows (solo)
2017 K-Gold Temporary Gallery, Lesvos
Body is victory and defeat of dreams
2017 K-Gold Temporary Gallery, Lesvos
Our fiestas are explosions
2016 Marina Abramović Institute, online
MAI + Tumblr

WORKSHOPS

2023 The Onion, Workshop with choreographer Lia Haraki
2020 Dramaturgy NOW, Workshop at Onassis Stegi
2019 Bodies Of Work, Workshop with Dance House Lemesos and BJCEM

EXHIBITION CURATION

2018 Perfectly Blue, Athens Museum of Queer Arts and K-Gold Temporary Gallery

MERITS

2020 ARTWORKS, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program
2017 NEON Curatorial Exchange, Whitechapel Gallery

COLLECTIONS

K-Gold Temporary Gallery, Municipal Theatre of Mytilini

COMMISSIONS

AnOther, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar China, Artsy, GARAGE et al.

WRITING

ARTWORKS Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship 2021 - 2022 Catalogue
Publications editor for K-Gold Temporary Gallery

To feel pain is to be human. It is pain of all forms, traumatizing and alienating body and mind. As much as I strive to avoid it, I invite more of it too, reveling in its still, deafening noise. Creating means to silence it. In its place, I find rhythm and music.

 

In my work, I chase the notion of transcendence. It’s a moment of transformation, a visceral moment of overcoming pain. When time is suspended, expanded, and contracted again. All that matters is how that shift echoes within.

 

My aim is to instigate and reinforce such moments; for they open up possibilities that can change us on every level—individual, social, and political. Resisting contemporary systems of oppression and pain can free us. How can a moment of heightened experience profoundly change the self? How can we achieve altered states of consciousness and challenge what we have accepted as our reality? Or, what are the ripple effects of switching from a passive, still to an active, moving state of being?

 

Performance is my main medium, out of which all others are inspired by. I try to highlight and amplify the relationship between the performer and the audience and question these boundaries.

 

I view my role as a conductor. My function is to set the context and facilitate a lived experience. By relinquishing control and by playing with my authority as an artist, unpredictability and disorder can permeate the work. This element of the unknown is an essential catalyst to enact moments that transcend and shift perspectives. Breaking up with traditional notions of authorship and control can destabilize. A space of new forms of social interaction and political agency is then possible.

 

Movement and dance are central avenues that I follow in devising works that often include the audience’s participation. Experimentation and improvisation become techniques and methods of resistance, towards discovering different ways of creating.

 

Overall, I find myself returning to these same questions:

  • How can the personal become communal and vice versa?
  • How can moments of transcendence become analogies to be applied in a personal and wider social context?
  • How can movement and dance be utilised as agents of change?
  • What happens when the audience shifts from passive viewing to active participation?
  • How does the body transcribe personal and collective histories and how social constructs affect its movement and being?
  • How can queerness become a method and strategy of resistance?