Valinia Svoronous’ approach can be categorized as artistic research, in which art serves as a method of knowledge production. Her artistic practice navigates the interfaces of history, technology and narration. With analytical and poetic sensitivity, she explores cultural and technological developments from both a personal and a collective perspective. Her works – which include text, moving images, apps, prints and sculptures – create multi-layered narratives that question dominant histories and open up new spaces of possibility for renegotiating the past and the future.
Having grown up in Athens as part of an immigrant family from Istanbul and Asia Minor, she explores the historical interdependencies and conflicts between the so-called East and West – and their ongoing impact on the present. Her work deals with migration, alienation and the cultural interactions that arise from these movements. She is particularly interested in the myths, symbols and informal knowledge systems inscribed in these dynamics – from oral traditions to gossip stories and craft practices.
A central focus of her practice is on making forgotten or marginalized stories of and about women and their presence within patriarchal, post-colonial structures visible. She uses artistic strategies of subversion and empowerment – from science fiction and subcultures to rituals, myths and mystical narratives. In her works, these narratives are activated as resistant forms of remembering and imagining in order to question hegemonic historiography and open up alternative perspectives on the past and future.