Georgia Kotretsos 

IAS Fellow at Stephenson College, October - December 2025

Contact Details

• Home Institution email: thetelossociety@gmail.com 
• Durham email: TBC
• Durham Tel:  TBC 

Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist, researcher, and publisher based in Athens, Greece. She earned her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a Full Merit Scholarship in 2004 and her BFA from the Durban Institute of Technology in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, in 2000. Moving to South Africa in her early teens during the abolition of apartheid, Georgia Kotretsos' life and work have been shaped by the intersection of cultural and political shifts.

Her artistic practice critiques the conformity of how we see and perceive artworks in relation to their environments. She explores liberating and anarchic approaches to art viewing, proposing that seeing is inherently site-specific and audience members are responsible for their own art knowledge. Her research-based practice, whether manifested as artwork, text, or interviews, encourages speculative approaches to how knowledge is produced by challenging traditional and historical norms. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Onassis Art Center and the Asian Society in New York, the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Tinguely Museum in Basel, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.

Georgia Kotretsos’ work is part of numerous permanent collections, including those of the National Bank of Greece and the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation, as well as several private collections. She has received eighteen grants, awards, and fellowships to support her creative and research endeavors and has been nominated for prestigious awards like the FAENA Art Prize, the Future Generation Art Prize, and the FOLLOW FLUXUS Fellowship.

Parallel to her studio practice, she has founded and directed several initiatives aimed at fostering contemporary art dialogue and practice. In 2019 she founded THE TEΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research lab Observatorium research platform in Athens, Greece.  Previously, she co-founded Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, MO (2006-10), a contemporary art laboratory, and launched Boot Print, a biannual journal dedicated to contemporary art, where she served as editor-in-chief. From 2009 to 2013, she contributed a monthly column, "Inside the Artist’s Studio," to the PBS Arts feature Art21 Magazine in New York, which was later published on LABKULTUR.TV in Germany. Over her career, she has conducted and published more than 500 interviews with art professionals globally.

In 2018, Georgia Kotretsos contributed to the Field Journal austerity report on Greek art and culture, writing a piece titled Athens Is the Only Cave in the World That Has a Skylight. Her publishing efforts extend to editing sixteen journals and five books on contemporary art practices to date.

She has also taken on roles beyond the art world, engaging in social practices and community-building initiatives. She has worked extensively with underdeveloped urban and rural areas, particularly in the Mediterranean, using these locales as points of inquiry into contemporary cultural heritage. In recent years, she has served as a creative advisor for a consortium of international research institutions on AI, Web3, and metaverse-related projects, as well as agrifood and innovation initiatives.

Between 2016 and 2020, Kotretsos was the youngest member of the National Council of Greek Women (NCGW), an NGO that is part of the International Council of Women and a founding member of the European Center of the International Council of Women. From 2014 to 2016, she was also a member of TOWER, a Thessaloniki-based NGO that supports career development for foreign and Greek women. Additionally, she participated in the Forum D’Avignon Ruhr 2014, organized by the European Centre for Creative Economy (ecce) in Essen, Germany, for three consecutive years.

Georgia Kotretsos is an Associate Lecturer at Deree, The American College of Greece in the Department of Arts & Creative Industries. 

Throughout her multifaceted career, Georgia Kotretsos continues to advocate for creative and innovative approaches to both art and education, as well as community development, using her interdisciplinary knowledge and experience to inspire change. During the Institute IAS Fellowship, she will contribute to developing tools and applying methods for broader research on the topic of ‘Arts Engagement and Mental Health at Work.’ Her experience working in remote areas can highlight key issues that become even more pronounced in the corporate world

Events

TBC