Yiannis Pappas is a visual and performance artist. Throughout Pappas’ work runs a deep fascination for the relation between space and the human body in natural and urban environments. Underscored by a critical interest in space, as sites of physical and symbolic enactment, his artistic work and research explore how different places are sustained collectively and individually throughout history.
Yiannis studied sculpture and photography at the Athens School of Fine Arts (Integrated Master of Arts) and at the University of the Arts in Berlin (UdK). Awarded by the Academy of Athens and by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) he completed the artistic and scientific MFA “Space Strategies” at the Academy of Arts Weißensee in Berlin. His art-based researches have been assigned by the Goethe Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Research Stipends of Berlin’s Senate and Department for Culture and Europe through interdisciplinary projects in Asia and the Middle East. An interventionist by nature, he looks for ways to find unlikely methods to engage responsiveness. His resonant and visual language includes video work, photography, performative, and installative practices, all of which bear the signs of Pappas’ anthropological and phenomenological approach toward his subjects.
He exhibited internationally in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South and North America (Biennale of Architecture Venice 2018, Bangkok Art Biennale 2018, Athens Biennale 2016, 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and more) while he attracted the attention of the worldwide press (CNN, New York Times, Art Foroum etc), have given his effort positive reviews. Yiannis Pappas was born on the island of Patmos, he lives in Berlin and works internationally.
A profile of Yiannis Pappas’ life and work
[Selected by WePresent guest curator Marina Abramović)