Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos
Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos is an interdisciplinary artist who grew up in a Greek family in Malba, Queens. She is based between New York City and Detroit and works on collaborative and solo projects that range in shape and scale.
Her most recent project “Temple of Psyche” was produced with ephemeral materials like discarded calendars, found objects, and a storehouse of pandemic-era delivery boxes. The installation explores the endurance and fragility of the human soul as it flails like an inflatable tube man in today’s unpredictable, gloriously f*cked-up world. Borrowing from Greek Orthodox methods of devotion and remembrance, the exhibit featured both small objects and larger-scale sculptures inspired by “tamata”, symbolic votive offerings often depicting human conditions in need of supernatural intervention, and “kandylakia”, roadside shrines erected in memory to lives lost in accidents commonly sighted throughout Greece.
Installation documentation from “Temple of Psyche”
PP: Walk us through a typical day in your studio or generally through your process to make new work.
EZ: Lately I’ve not had much of a personal studio practice though oddly enough I work three days a week in an art studio. Despite not having my own studio at the moment, working as an art advisor in a progressive art studio feels like I’ve been keeping a practice. It just looks different.
I work at Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC) assisting artists with developmental disabilities and mental health issues make work in their studio. A typical day at the studio (my job) starts at 8:30 am. I arrive and greet the artists and we get to work. Some folks have projects they’ve been working on for weeks so I’ll set them up with the supplies they’ve been using. Often a new artist is entering the program so I’ll offer some supplies and see what kind of work they make using different materials. The artists usually wrap up around 2:30 and then I clean up. I do my best to reset the studio for the next group coming in the morning.
Installation view of “Temple of Psyche” exhibited at the Fine Arts Gallery at York College
PP: What motivates you to make art?
EZ: Life experience and wanting to connect with people motivates me so it makes a lot of sense that a tiny practice of my own has emerged while working my job.
PP: Tell us about what type of mediums you’ve been working with lately?
EZ: At PASC, some artists will produce a lot of work so stuff they don’t want to keep or will likely never be displayed or bought is recycled. I create scrap paper with their recycled artwork that I then use to demonstrate ideas, show colors, test things, etc.
I’ve started becoming really attached to the studio scrap paper so I’ve been collecting it. I usually wait a few weeks before adding new ones to my collection because I like how the paper gets used over and over again. There is also something fun about waiting and potentially losing the opportunity to take it as it might get thrown out from one day to the next by an artist or coworker.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with my collection. All I have time for now is to lay them out and ponder them and that’s okay!
PP: Is community something you value in your practice? Why or why not?
EZ: Community is something I really value especially since I can be really bad at staying connected. Community checks in on you! It’s so good to have friends and to belong to different groups of people doing interesting things. I think the biggest challenges I face as an artist are my self-criticism and toxic FOMO but I’m learning to transform the negative feelings associated with them into something positive like gratitude.