Louisa Avgita – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Louisa Avgita is Assistant Professor in Art History at the School of Visual and Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Lecturer in European Arts at the Hellenic Open University. She holds a PhD in Art Criticism from City University London. Her research focuses on the critical analysis of identity discourses and issues related to the politics of representation and display in contemporary visual arts, artistic labour, as well as the curatorial conceptualisations of history and geography in contemporary art. She co-edited, with Juliet Steyn, the special issue “Balkans” of the academic journal Third Text (vol. 21, no. 2, March 2007). She is also the co-editor, with Areti Adamopoulou, of the volume Τέχνη, Εργασία, Αγορά (Art, Labour, Market), published by AICA-Hellas in 2019.

Avgita has worked as a curator in London and Greece and was the coordinator of the series of events ‘Art Under Construction: the Balkans in Context’. In her PhD thesis, titled The Remaking of the Balkans in Contemporary Art Exhibitions: A Critical View, she examined contemporary visual art exhibitions that have addressed the Balkans as a structure of representation. These exhibitions, fourteen in number, were organised by international and local curators in Western and Central European cities, as well as in the Balkan region, between 1999 and 2006. Avgita considers these exhibitions as ideological mechanisms which, in their effects, formulate Balkan “otherness” and sustain neoliberal policies and market cultural particularities. Curatorial discourses are examined in relation to critiques of stereotypical representations of the Balkans, systematised in the discourse of Balkanism. Email: lavgita@vis.auth.gr.