Eva Andronikidou (Greece, Athens, 1984) is active as a freelance architect, landscape architect, visual artist, stage designer, and actor, publishing articles, announcing at conferences and participating in exhibitions, theater productions, artistic programs and other projects internationally. She has lived, been educated, worked and presented work in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, England, Germany, Chile, Italy, Israel, USA, France, Romania. She has worked as a Tutor at the Erasmus Mundus Joint MasterALA (Architecture Landscape Archaeology), at N.T.U.A, since 2020. She is a PhD Candidate at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens and at her final year of studies at Athens School of Fine Arts. She holds a Joint Master Degree in Architecture (N.T.U.A.), a Master in Landscape Architecture (E.T.S.A.B., U.P.C., Barcelona) and a diploma in Acting (LaCasona Formaciòn y investigaciòn teatral, Barcelona). She speaks Greek, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. One of the most important parts of her life is activism; she is a stray animal rescuer and has volunteered at refugee camps with children.

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How has your upbringing cultural background influenced your artistic journey and creative expression?

Truth is, I had almost no artistic stimuli as a child. Μy family had totally other interests. From a young age, a talent for drawing had been commented on by teachers, and it was something I did for hours and enjoyed a lot, but my parents didn't encourage me to do it any further. That's why, even though the School of Fine Arts was my childhood dream, I started studying Architecture. My family had a denial towards this impulse. I was reading tons of comics though. I have read thousands of them of all kinds! And watched a lot of B movies. I think that those habits affected my freedom and my creativity.

At what point in your life did you firmly decide to pursue art, and what were the pivotal factors that influenced that decision?

It was not a moment but rather a period of time during which my thoughts gradually changed. During my Master studies in Barcelona, I started practising acrobatics and studied theatre. I then had a big crisis with architecture. I did not want to spend my life in an office. The freedom I was feeling while studying theatre was what I wanted. I came back and immediately joined the exams for Athens School of Fine Arts. Since then, I am mixing all my studies and experience and work in multidisciplinary directions.

Share your sources of inspiration. What are your primary sources of inspiration? Do these come from personal experiences, observations, history, nature, or other artists? Can you give specific examples of how these inspirations have manifested in your work?

My inspirations relate to personal and deep worries and interests. The actual issues like the climate change and environmental crisis are always a field that attracts me to create. Space generally is a  field I enjoy a lot: space as a concept and creating space through installations. Also, knowing and recognising spaces - sites. Sites are also a big inspiration: due to my architectural background, I also enjoy knowing new places and work on site specific projects, developing abstract concepts through real and existing scenarios.

Could you tell us about the most meaningful piece that you have created? What makes this piece particularly significant to you, and what was the inspiration or story behind it?

It is difficult to choose one work, as I feel they are all connected and all my children! Each one is a brick in a construction I am unconsciously building and that to some extent, is part of my inside world: thoughts, feelings, ideas, dreams, opinions. To answer this question, I could choose maybe the first work of a series called “Ecotone”. It is called “Ecotone I and two: Kallion”. I can cite an objective and a subjective reason to justify it. The first is, because it was my first attempt to create an installation, and to approach an environmental subject and a natural environment of a specific site. It was a turning point for my practice and an experiment I consider successful as it led to many others. The second one is that it refers to the village of my great grandmother, Kallion, which nowadays lies in the bottom of an artificial lake, created 5 years before I was born. I grew up as a second generation Athenian: the rest of my relatives come from Asia Minor, so this was the only place in Greece that I could identify as a root, and it does not exist anymore- at least it is not accessible. So going and working there was very special for me. I do not know if it is a “good” artwork or not -I also do not know what is good and bad in art in general, I think it is a very wide conversation- but still it remains special.

Discuss the impact of environmental sustainability on your work. How has your participation in Turning the Tide influenced your approach to addressing environmental issues through art?

 

The term sustainability is important for my life and my work in general. I work on it in my PhD, my architecture practice, my teaching at National Technical University of Athens, I try to live a sustainable everyday life, recycling, biking etc, so naturally I incorporate it in my artistic practice as well. Ecosystems and the changes of the physical world, referring especially to what is lost and what that means, are the central axis for my work. TTT was a great opportunity to work in a holistic way. The site (Gdansk) was very special in its relation with water. I got to know a lot about global warming and it was really a very deep study that was inspired by the site- I really don't know if it would be the same in a different site. My narrative contains the past, the present and the future of the city, in order to finish with possible solutions that are based on the special characteristics of the site and its past. I believe sustainability is very closely related to sites and to people that inhabit them. That is why I chose mapping: mapping on a paper in scale, mapping on video, mapping using physical elements (algae that was placed where it was found on the map), mapping through people (on the map one can scan qrs and see works and thoughts of students). Locality plays a central role in this work, and for me this is the first step of a sustainable approach.

How has collaborating with local communities during your residency influenced your artistic practice? What insights from these collaborations have been most significant in shaping your final project?

A place, as mentioned in the previous question, is also its people. All the colleagues I  collaborated with were amazing, and my understanding of the place would never be the same as it was through them. I also did some work with the architecture students: they filled some questionnaires and showed me their projects, referring to their relation with water in the city, the climate change and the rising water surface. It was apocalyptic to see that some of them were not aware, and that others have worked on university projects relating to that. It would be impossible to understand a site and present a project in a month without these significant inputs.