Maria Sideri is an artist and researcher. Her practice involves performance, text, voice and sound and her artistic research is influenced from her background in anthropology and history of religion. Through different research methods, her work explores embodied and affective archives. Her investigations turn to the body as an archive and archivist and towards notions of memorisation and possession as artistic methodologies that uncover oral histories of bodies that are often silenced. Working with the body as a basic medium, her practice is shaped around themes of representation, re-enactment and feminisms. Her solo practice is equally informed from various collaborations with community and youth projects which investigate the body as a tool of documentation for oral histories with an aim to preserve or create counter archives of affect and empowerment. 

Maria has performed and exhibited at This Current Between us (2022-23), Kiev Biennale (2021), MOMus Museums (2021), Stavros Niarchos (2019), Phenomena / Φαινόμενα as a commission of State of Concept (2021), the 4th Biennale/ Greece (2013), ArtsAdmin (2014), Trouble Festival (2013) and Spill Festival (2012). Parallel to her solo practice Maria has collaborated as a performer over the last 10 years with various artists internationally. Maria has also been developing community and youth projects like the project Assemblages part of the Artistic Acupuncture Missions and hosted by Lieux Public of the INSITU network in Marseille (2018-9), the project Déviation (2019) with Signal Festival and CIFAS in Bruxelles and Hello World Choir (2017) with Tadamon in Cairo. Maria has received funding from the Arts Council of England for her work Vibrant Matter/La Métachorie project (2014-6) and was awarded the ARTWORKS Fellowship in 2018 in Athens. Since March 2018 she is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Macedonia in the department of Applied and Visual Arts. 

“Through different research methods my work is shaped around themes of archives, embodiment, feminisms and rituals.  My investigations turn to the body being an archive and archivist simultaneously and towards notions of memorisation and possession as artistic methodologies that uncover histories of bodies that are often silenced. Using different mediums and research methods through the various projects I am engaging with, I am interested in finding ways to expand the notion of archives and documentation through and with the body with an aim to create counter archives of affect and empowerment”.

Maria Sideri