Profile (for CV click here)
Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-born and London-based artist. Educated in architecture at UCL, visual art at the Slade School and music, Karikis's inter-disciplinary practice includes video installation, performance art, photography, painting and music. His work is equally embraced by the art gallery and the concert hall.
Recent projects include the Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, screenings at Whitechapel Gallery, commissions for Barbican, Royal Opera House, Spitalfields Festival, 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale (Greece) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeju Island (S. Korea). Recent solo art projects include XENON: an exploded opera, Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy, Whitstable Biennale and Kings Place Music Foundation, UK (2010). Group exhibitions include Artist’s Body, Space C*, Coreana Museum of Art, S.Korea (2010), 7th International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Gyumri, Armenia (2010), Extraordinary Voices, Tate Britain, London (2009), Hesperides II, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Switzerland (2009), For you only you, Milton Keynes Gallery, UK (2008) and Model Arts & Niland Gallery, Ireland (2008).
Since the first release of his music by pop-icon Bjork on One Little Indian records in 2005, Mikhail’s music releases have included his debut Orphica (2007) with Belgian label Sub Rosa, his interdisciplinary album Morphica (2009), nominated for a Qwartz Electronic Music Award 2010, France, and various contributions on remix and compilation albums, including Sound Unbound by DJ Spooky alongside Roy Ikeda, Aphex Twin, Steve Reich, Edgard Varese and others (Sub Rosa & MIT Press, 2007), Songspin (2011) by Juice Vocal Ensemble alongside Gabriel Prokofiev with Nonclassical label. Recent radio appearances include interviews and radio play on BBC London, BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, and RAI 3.
Artist's Statement
Mikhail Karikis’s work emerges from his long-standing investigation of the voice as a sculptural material and a conceptual compass, which he employs to explore notions of difference and impossibility, professional identity and human rights. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach to visual art, performance and sound, Karikis's work ranges from the poetic to the tragicomic creating situations for unlikely encounters, which encourage the re-evaluation of processes and rituals of address, and activate the potential for ruptures both in perception and ethical concerns.
More information
Mikhail was born in the port city of Thessaloniki in Greece. He moved to London in 1993. He studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture (Univerity College London) with avant-gard British architects "Archigram" and the Slade School of Fine Art with theatre director Philip Prowse, art theorist Norman Bryson and artist Lis Rhodes, where he completed his doctorate 'The Acoustics of the Self' (2006).
Mikhail Karikis has given talks in numerous universities, galleries and museums; he has taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Central Saint Martins College, Middlesex University; he is a permanent senior lecturer in Performance and Visual Art at the University of Brighton, UK.
