contact details
email: a.m.kokoli@rgu.ac.uk
tel: 00 44 (0)1224 263692

web site:
www.thefword.org.uk

Dr. ALEXANDRA KOKOLI

Biographical Statement

Alexandra Kokoli (BA Thessaloniki, MA Warwick, DPhil Sussex) joined Gray’s in October 2007 as Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies. She has previously taught across the disciplines of art history, critical theory, English, media, and gender studies at the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton.

Her research interests are similarly interdisciplinary, spanning the Freudian uncanny, feminist and postcolonial critiques of language and representation, and the legacies of second-wave feminism in the visual arts.

She has published on Angela Carter, the women’s postal art event Feministo: Portrait of the Artist as a Housewife (1975-77), Susan Hiller, and other contemporary artists.

She is a member of the Association of Art Historians (AAH), the College Art Association (CAA), and the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (FWSA).

She is a regular contributor to The Art Book and the online magazine The F-Word: Contemporary UK Feminism (http://www.thefword.org.uk/), and has recently edited the essay collection Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Personal Statement

Stemming from the expanded field of comparative literature, my research has always been interdisciplinary, focusing on various interfacings between word and image, including the visual aspects of writing; writings by artists; the classification of artists and art practices according to pre-existing signifying systems.

My interest in ‘feminist art’ (or rather art associated with the second wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement) has led me to challenge the separation between theory and practice: all practice proposes its own theories, and theory can only be articulated through different types of practice. Rather than analysing visual art in light of psychoanalytic theory and its poststructuralist and feminist reinterpretations, I strive to stage mutually probing encounters between different texts, broadly defined.

I’m currently working on women artists, the history of the ‘woman artist’ as a distinct classification, and the role of ‘race’ in the critical and popular reception of contemporary art.

Recent Publications:

Peer Reviewed Article - ' On Probation: "Tracey Emin" as Sign', Wasafiri, vol. 25, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 33-40.

Edited Books:

A. M. Kokoli (ed.), Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007); electronic edition also available. [Reviewed in The Art Book, vol. 16, no. 4 (November 2009), p. 40]

Susan Hiller, The Provisional Texture of Reality: Selected Texts and Interviews, 1977-2007, edited, introduced and annotated by A. M. Kokoli (Zurich: JRP|Ringier, 2009).

Forthcoming:
Editor of catalogue section in Ann Gallagher et al. (eds.) Susan Hiller (London: Tate, 2010).

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