Some of the most interesting things in a city are easy to miss—a plant growing through a crack in the pavement, a forgotten object, a small ecosystem quietly forming in an overlooked corner.
We visited Maria Andrikopoulou in her home and studio to talk about walking, observation, and the quiet details that shape her work. Through collecting plants, sounds, and fragments of the urban landscape, she creates installations that reveal the subtle relationships between ecology, memory, and place.
Her work gently shifts the way we look at familiar environments, drawing attention to the ecosystems and connections that have been there all along.
Maria, do you remember the first time you felt like an artist, before anyone else called you one? And if you look back at your early work, what still feels present today?
I don’t remember a specific moment when I “felt like an artist”. Rather, from my childhood onward, I recall a persistent need to observe, to make connections, and to invent worlds from materials I found around me.
I grew up in a small mountain village, in a farming family, where the relationship with nature was one of everyday engagement but also of practical dependence and survival. Agricultural work often involved processes of gathering, observing, and collaborating, such as harvesting beans or collecting wild herbs. These are practices that require attentiveness and a form of knowledge that is collectively transmitted, by word of mouth, from one generation to the next. Without realizing it at the time, these experiences deeply shaped the way I think about and approach my artistic practice today.
My personal work is primarily developed through research-based processes with an interdisciplinary character and is realized through multimedia installations. Field research and the collection of objects, traces, and fragments always form the starting point.
What has changed over the years is mainly a matter of awareness and tools. Observation became a methodology; collecting evolved into mapping, documentation, and reassembly. At the core of my practice remains the same impulse: to create conditions in which a space can be seen again through a different, more open perspective, and transformed into a field of relationships.
In recent years, my research has increasingly turned toward urban ecologies, paying particular attention to forms of life that often go unnoticed, such as wild, spontaneous vegetation.
What usually comes first in your process—an idea, a material, a feeling or a sound? And how do you know when a collection of fragments becomes an installation?
The process usually begins with experiencing a place. Often, the first stage is walking. There were periods in my life when I moved frequently because of work, and walking was the most immediate way for me to form a connection with each place. Since 2017, I have consciously begun to integrate walking as a practice within my artistic process.
During these walks, I collect plants, sounds, and objects from the urban environment. Gradually, this process has been enriched with technological tools: field recordings, mapping, and 3D scanning, which allow me to create hybrid landscapes where natural elements, technological media, and human gestures coexist.
The installation begins to take shape when the individual elements start to connect with one another and form a relational environment. At that point, I realize that it is no longer simply a collection, but a space of experience—a place where all these fragments can coexist and begin to resonate with one another.
“Observation became a methodology; collecting evolved into mapping, documentation, and reassembly.“
Your practice moves between space, ecology, and memory. When you approach a place as a site of excavation, what are you really searching for?
When I approach a place as a field of “excavation,” I am not searching solely for material traces, but for fragments of ongoing or past relationships. I am interested in what remains, what has been forgotten, what survives quietly within the urban environment. Often, these elements are not spectacular: it might be a weed growing in a crack, an insignificant object, or a story that has never been recorded before.
For me, excavation is not archaeological in the strict sense. It is a way of observing the layers of a place, its material, ecological, and social strata.
Ultimately, what I seek is not a fixed truth, but to uncover the living dynamics of a place: the latent possibilities it holds and the relationships that can be awakened.
What have plants—or other forms of non-human life—taught you that humans haven’t?
Plants, and non-human life forms in general, have taught me to see the world beyond the human perspective.
By observing ecosystems, I realized that in nature, life is organized through interdependence and cooperation, and not only through control and domination, contrary to the popular Darwinian narrative.
One example is mycorrhizal networks: the underground connections between roots and fungi that allow for the circulation of nutrients and information. These networks function as an invisible support system.
I focus on the term “weeds” because it clearly exposes a deeply anthropocentric perspective. We tend to label as weeds any plants that do not serve our needs or expectations. Yet many of these species are the first to return to disturbed soils, playing a crucial role in the regeneration of ecosystems.
In this process, I see a form of resilience grounded not in control or imposition, but in relationships and forms of cooperation.
“In nature, life is organized through relationships of interdependence and cooperation.”
What are you currently working on?
At the moment I am working on Flowerbed, an installation in progress that constructs a hybrid landscape. The work brings together elements necessary for the survival of plant organisms in a hypothetical post-catastrophic world and functions as a pseudo-ecosystem that gradually evolves through processes of collecting, observation, and experimentation within the urban environment.
At the center of the research are the city’s wild plants, the so-called “weeds.” I am interested in observing the ways in which they persist and reappear within the urban fabric, often in cracks, abandoned sites, or small residual spaces of the city. Through this process, the work proposes a garden, not as a space of controlled vegetation, but as a field of negotiation between different forms of life.
The installation combines different media, drawings, texts, soundscapes, video, 3D-printed plant forms, and living vegetation, creating a multisensory environment where the natural and the artificial coexist. At the same time, the project develops through a series of workshops titled How to Grow Weeds, which function as an active extension of the installation. Through walking routes, plant collecting, and sound recordings, the workshops transform the city itself into a field of observation and experimentation.
Flowerbed could not exist without the collaborations that support it. Together with Eva Papanikolaou, an art theorist, we co-design the workshops and develop an ongoing theoretical dialogue. Nikos Thomaidis supports the sound component and the integration of plant bio-data into the sonic environment of the installation, while Fenia Rizou and the Ecolapsis studio support the process of 3D visualization and printing of the plant forms.
In a way, the work itself functions as a network of relationships between people, plants, technologies, and places- relationships that are continuously transforming.
How does teaching influence your artistic practice? What have collective workshops changed in you?
I have been involved in teaching for the past ten years, and there has always been a kind of osmosis between pedagogy and my artistic practice.
In Flowerbed, this relationship becomes a structural element of the work. Together with Eva Papanikolaou, we co-develop the How to Grow Weeds workshops, which function as an active extension of the installation. The workshops operate exactly like temporary mycorrhizal networks: fields of exchange where knowledge, experience, and observation circulate among participants and eventually return to the work itself.
Through this process, I have learned to leave more space for collective thinking, and I have come to understand artistic practice as a form of cohabitation.
Does working with ecological systems change your sense of time?
Plants and ecosystems operate at different rhythms than those of human productivity. There are cycles of growth, waiting, adaptation, and decomposition that cannot be accelerated.
This realisation has helped me become more accepting of uncertainty within the process. Often, things do not unfold as I initially planned: a plant may not survive, an element of the work may change unexpectedly, or the installation itself may shift through the participation of others.
Flowerbed, for example, is never stable or final. This open process has led me to see “failure” not as a mistake but more as part of a living evolution.
In a way, ecological systems remind us that survival does not depend on perfection, but on adaptation and on the relationships that develop over time.
“Ecological systems remind us that survival does not depend on perfection, but on adaptation and relationships.”
Your home holds such character. How does the space you live in shape the way you think and create?
My home is directly connected to my artistic practice, as it also functions as my studio. Objects, plants, books, and collected materials coexist in space in a way that reflects how I think- creating associations, observations, and small shifts in perspective.
It is located in the center of the city. On one side there is a busy main street, while on the other there is the building’s open courtyard, which has gradually turned into a small habitat with spontaneous vegetation, insects, birds, and cats. This co-existence between the urban rhythms and non-human forms of life constitutes a continuous field of observation for me.
At the same time, the apartment building itself is a kind of social microcosm. Relationships with neighbors, encounters, shared cooking, and spontaneous gatherings create forms of everyday coexistence within our busy everyday lives.
During the quarantine period, my home became both a site of mapping and a material for the work itself. In the installation Visitors (2021–2022), developed in collaboration with Nelly Palaiogianni, an architect and art theorist, Kostis Monastiridis, a Unity3D developer, and Fenia Rizou, a 3D artist, the floor plan of my home was transformed into a virtual navigation environment. The viewer could move through the space while listening to private conversations with my partner, my friends, and my family.
In this way, the private space was reconfigured as a field where the notions of intimacy, presence, and observation are redefined through the digital environment.
As far as I know, you are also a member of an independent curatorial and artistic group, FAST FILLY. What was the need of yours, in order to set up this group?
Fast Filly is an interdisciplinary group formed in collaboration with Nelly Palaiogianni and Fenia Rizou, whom I mentioned earlier. A filly is a female horse that meets specific characteristics allowing it to compete in horse races alongside male horses. Its racing career is usually short and closely linked to its young age. The name is used as an ironic reference to our everyday experiences as women.
The creation of the group emerged from a shared need for collaboration and communication, with the aim of producing collective works within a framework of companionship, knowledge exchange from each member’s field of expertise, and mutual support. We have already curated two exhibitions, kato and in-habit. At the same time, we continue to work on both artistic and curatorial proposals, for which the necessary resources and means for realization have not yet been secured.
The aim of the group aligns closely with the way I think and work more broadly, as it centers on the creation of networks, the support of individuals within the field of the arts, and co-creation around shared questions and concerns.
What does a real working day look like for you; not the ideal one, the real one?
My daily life is demanding. I wake up early and travel to Veria, where I work as a visual arts teacher. Many days my work continues until the afternoon. The rest of my time is divided between preparation, research, meetings, and practical responsibilities.
Because of these conditions, there is no clear separation between my artistic work and my everyday life. They are so organically connected that ideas and practices often emerge on the road, during a commute, or through an ordinary daily encounter. Thinking does not begin only when I “enter the studio”; it takes shape within the flow of life itself.
At the same time, in Greece the structures that would allow a visual artist to sustain themselves exclusively through their art and research are almost nonexistent. Remaining an active artist often presupposes certain economic and social privileges.
I do not have the resources that would guarantee this possibility, and this inevitably shapes the way I work and think. Nevertheless, I try to resist the idea that art belongs only to those who have the time and the means. I claim space to create and persist in my artistic practice even when the material conditions limit it.
Are there ideas or directions you feel ready to explore next?
Yes, at the moment I am developing the idea for a project that will take the form of an art book. I am interested in documenting practices of care, everyday invention, and the exchange of knowledge that emerge through collective experiences.
The project will unfold through a series of small gatherings and workshops with friends and collaborators, where activities such as cooking, crafting, or sharing personal stories will serve as starting points for dialogue and collective creation.
Within this process, the domestic space plays an important role, as the meetings will take place in my own home. I am interested in the home not only as a space of hospitality, but as a small field of collective experience where everyday life can be transformed into an artistic and social practice.
This idea is also connected to experiences from the place where I grew up. There, women formed informal networks of collaboration and support through shared work and the exchange of practical knowledge. I learned many of these practices from my neighbor in my hometown, Asimo Dimitrakopoulou, a woman who introduced me to forms of everyday knowledge passed down from generation to generation.
Today, I understand these experiences through the lens of ecofeminism, which recognizes the importance of cooperation, care, and the knowledge produced through everyday life. I am interested in bringing something of this logic of mutual support into the urban environment and exploring how small collective gestures can function as forms of a contemporary politics of care.
Three words that describe this chapter of your life.
Observation — Coexistence — Adaptability
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See more of Maria's work here:
instagram.com/maria__andrikopoulou
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Photography: Alexandra Kouziaki, © 2026 Plexida Knitwear.
