Constantina Zavitsanos

Statement

Constantina Zavitsanos works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound. Her work deals largely in issues of debt and dependency, and asks how access, intimacy, opacity, and fugitivity might transform processes of distribution and exchange. Zavitsanos views care as an infrastructural concern. She is deeply invested in the specifically informal surplus power of inconsequence and reproduction from which form arises, which is to say her work privileges art and objecthood, or aesthetics and social life.

Zavitsanos lives in New York, where she is a part of disability community both as a care provider and recipient. She teaches at the New School.

Specific Objects: Stack Specific Objects: Spill Sweepstakes It was what I wanted now.
Specific Objects: Stack
2015

disabled access grab bars on wall
dimensions variable, installation

Specific Objects: Spill
2015

projected two channel digital video
looped, installation

Video of hands falling on glass, shot from below

Sweepstakes
2015

VISA cards loaded with funds from a class action lawsuit settlement against the NYPD, 2004-2014; dimensions variable, installation on ADA access desk in the New Museum entrance lobby, May to September, 2015 One card was offered to the public daily in increments of $25, $50, $100, $500. An additional card was offered Thursday evenings for up to $1500.

It was what I wanted now. (1855/1982/2013) [detail]
2013

Student loan contract expanded in hourly increments and recorded daily from 2010-2013, shipping contract and other genealogical records, stacked through two floors, text on paper, aluminum. 8.5" x 11" x 182" This column resulted from a 3-year performance that began when the artist?s student loans were consolidated. Once daily, this debt, including projected interest, was recorded in increments of one hour, alongside the hour (n of 219,000 hours), and the available funds in the artist's bank account. These records, plus paper for logging the remaining 22 years, yielded a 38' stack. The stack was then extended until it spanned the height of the room, comprising an inheritance of familial debt stretching back to 1737.
Score for Crossing an Open Field Ply Self Portrait (EDMR) I plan to stay a believer [detail]

Score for Crossing an Open Field
2013
from the series Score for Before, scores for acts of care between 2 people, text, screenshot dimensions variable

This particular score is for the construction of a lap as produced by two people.

Ply
2012
two perpendicular letters, digital video projection
dimensions variable, installation

This video installation is made from crossing two black and white images of text at 90 degree angles to one another and capturing their projection on video. The optics involved in copying via the projection produces color in the reproduction, inverting what is typically seen as loss in mimesis. Each image is a letter written to different addressees, one personal, one professional.

 Self Portrait (EMDR)
2010
one year's sleep on memory foam pillow, wood
20" x 26" x 6"

I plan to stay a believer. [detail]
2015
dual digital projection where viewer's shadow reveals second video, light boxes, sound
dimensions variable
installation


This installation included a projected image of an engraved marker on Governor's Island, describing the exchange of the island between the Dutch and the Manahatas. A second projector displayed a mapping video game, which can be seen only when a viewer's body blocks the first projector's beam. Light boxes beneath display the items used to purchase the island, according to the plaque: two axe heads a string of beads, and a handful of nails. Headphones mounted on the wall play Curtis Mayfield's 1971 recording, "I plan to stay a believer."