Chrysanne Stathacos [biography]
Chrysanne Stathacos is a multi-media artist and educator whose art works and interactive public art projects
have traveled to museums, public spaces and contemporary art galleries on four continents. Her
art practice makes connections between ritual actions and contemporary performance/installation art to
create cross-cultural hybrid works that engage the public by giving them the opportunity to have direct
participation.
Stathacos is a graduate of York University, Toronto, and has received awards from the Puffin Foundation,
The Japan Foundation, The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and Art Matters. She currently
resides between Toronto and New York.
Her first interactive public art work, The Wish Machine, was originally commissioned
by Creative Time for Grand Central Station, New York (1997) and has traveled to train stations and museums,
including The Power Plant Art Gallery, Toronto, Ludwig Forum Museum and the Frankfurt Train Station,
Germany.
In 2001 she received a Fellowship from The Japan Foundation to research wishing actions in Japan. This
resulted in her next public interactive art works, Refuge, A Wish Garden (2003), first
presented at the Gardenschau, Grossenheim Germany, and The Roses, an ongoing
temporal installation work which was shown at Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi and The Jaipur Festival,
India, curated by Peter Nagy (2005). Refuge, A Wish Garden and The Roses will
be presented at The Abington Art Center in Philadelphia (2006).
Stathacos has produced three artists books, and so beautiful (1995), 1000+ Wishes(1999)
and Invisible Colors (2002) from The Aura Project. She is currently
working on her next book, Natural Wishing, as well as a secret project to take place in
Greece and India.
As Director of Education at Artists Space, New York, Stathacos initiated the artists in/ed program, featuring
collaborative artists' residency projects by artists such as Joy Episalla and A Constructed World in
New York City Schools. She has curated shows in Toronto, such as Terminal Building (A
Space), Sex and Language (Garnet Press Gallery), the Hallwalls/A Space Exchange,
and in 2004 the project collaboration Candy Factory/Instant Coffee (Art Metropole).
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