Anna Koutsafti

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Anna Koutsafti is a multidisciplinary Greek artist currently working in Glasgow, Scotland. Her works intertwine text and images, form and meaning. Anna delves into dystopian themes, using 'poor' images to express themes of generalized anxiety and desire in an uncertain digital age. These images, scavenged online or created with unconventional methods like burner phone cameras, lose their original context to become abstract representations of reality, interrogating the oftentimes dystopic sovereignty of the HD digital world and its pervasive influence on contemporary life. Her autofictional work focuses on the insecurities driven by current events, the uncertainty of existence, and the spectres that haunt intimacy.

Anna Koutsafti holds a BA in Fine Art from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. She has participated in a collective printmaking residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. In 2022 she was awarded the EU Saltire Scholarship.
Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions, such as:
On Geoffroy Tory at the Bibliotheque des Quatres Pilliers in Bourges, France, in 2019.
Orbiting Modernity at Tranzit Cluj in Romania, 2022.
Rinse (online exhibition), in 2021
MFA Interim Show at Florence Street School in Glasgow, UK, in 2022.
Labyrinth: how many times? at the New Glasgow Society in Glasgow, UK, in 2022.
Do Something at the Barnes Garage in Glasgow, UK, in 2023.
MFA Degree Show at Florence Street School in Glasgow, UK, in 2023.
Offest at New Alchemy Experiment in Glasgow, UK, in 2023

We Would Live In An Ugly City And We Would Be Happy, 2023

Dye sublimation print on satin, Screenprint on acrylic, Steel, dimensions variable
Dye sublimation print and screenprint on organza, Screenprint on acrylic, Steel, dimensions variable“Let the others go to Switzerland, to Los Angeles, To Saint Mauricius, to the Bermuda triange. We, would live in an ugly city and we would be happy” is how Nikos Panagiotopoulos film Beautiful People end. I saw it by chance in a heatwave packed Athens on my mothers television when I was trying to avoid the panic attack my latest love affair was raging on me. We Would Live In An Ugly City And We Would Be Happy is a love story between Athens and Glasgow, both ugly cities, both a place where we could be happy. Longing and desire exist as ghosts, that haunt the places we walk through, the spaces we inhabit. Images of these places reflect these spectres, images that are themselves ghosts, poor and abstract. The installation exists as fragmented pieces of a series taking form through different interventions on textile, opening up the opportunity to play and experiment with their placement in a space, and crating different narrative options for the viewer to explore while visiting the space.

The Algorithm Brings Up Your Name All The Time, 2023
And It Feels Like I’m Losing My Mind, 2023
I Blame My Fantasies For This, 2023 
But I Think I Dreamt Of You Last Night, 2023
Something Like A Vice, 2023

  • Lithography on Aluminum Sheets, 60 x 35 cm
A series of lithographs on metal, distorted fragments of a larger text that are creating a vague narrative about generalised anxiety and distress in the context of an imaginary love. 

Archangel, 2023

  • Single-channel video (no sound), 10 mn
Archangel is a semi-autofictional narrative following the flight of a celestial object as it burns through the Earth’s atmosphere over the town of Archangel. Fiction bleeds into reality, creating a narrative of personal difficulties, current affairs and scientific occurrences. Archangel is maybe more of a religious reference than an actual geographical coordinate and could be both the destination and the object burning through Earth’s atmosphere.

Who Slips Into My Robot Body And Whispers To My Ghost?, Ghosting, 2022

Silkscreen on Organza and Silver Fabric, Text and Pigment Print on Cotton Voile, dimensions variableWho Slips Into My Robot Body And Whispers To My Ghost? together with Ghosting explore the concept of ghosts and haunting in the digital age, the piece is an evocation of what is left unsaid and the spectral facet of intimacy, how technology bleeds into interpersonal relationships and manifests into bodily ways. Although it carries two different titles, I consider the piece a single piece of work, compromised by two separate parts.

Untitled Glitch Stills, 2021

  • Inkjet print on paper, 190 x 80 cm


nxt.lvl.sht.

  • mixed media drawing on paper, 2019-2022