Where are the limits of individualism and how is it possible to achieve balances between collectivity and individual longings?
Maria Ikonomopoulou continuously explores such issues with her work, blending photography with a range of materials traditionally related to Folk Art.

In an ongoing series of works Ikonomopoulou alters photographs that she has been collecting over the years: athletes, politicians, film stars or common people are being cut out of the original context and worked over. In ‘spaces between us’ embroideries fill the negative spaces between two or more photographed subjects, whereas in ‘looking through’ the subjects are cut out, in an attempt to re-evaluate the original spaces in-between.

During commissions Ikonomopoulou has been doing in public spaces for several years, she kept record of all the names of people that have participated in her projects. These names reappear in her new works, installations and photoworks, as paper cut outs and hanwritten texts that become texture in a special way.

GROWING CARE by MAria Ikonomopoulou
14 November - 14  December at  CBK (Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam, Nieuwe Binnenweg 75, 3014 GE Rotterdam, tel 010 436 0288)
During some months Ikonomopoulou took pictures of outer wall gardens that citizens of Rotterdam individually take care of and offer to the public space.
At the City Art Center of Rotterdam she presents (November 14th until December 14th / ) an installation of cut out prints as flowers and creates her own garden in the shape of climbing plants.
In a serie of other works close up’s of the outer wall gardens, first names of their owners and names of the plants become all together a lace of cut out paper.

Growing Care has been presented before in Athens, and similar projects are planed in Thessaloniki  (GR) and Queretaro (MX) for the year 2009.