MATTER AS A VESSEL. A CONVERSATION ON THE ARCHAEOLOGIES OF THE FUTURE WITH VISUAL ARTIST ATHINA KOUMPAROULI
At the heart of the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, Athina Koumparouli presents Deep Sea, Deep Time—an installation that carries fragments of a dialogue seemingly spanning centuries. The work arises from a desire to merge two worlds often seen as incompatible: the ancient port of Muziris, once a spice-trade hub marked by antiquity and colonial exploitation, and Kochi’s contemporary role as a major node for global undersea internet cables.
Koumparouli studied Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art at the University of West Attica and Post-Industrial Design in the postgraduate program at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly. In 2019, she was an Erasmus+ fellow at BioArt Laboratories in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Most recently, she presented a solo exhibition at A. Antonopoulou Art Gallery in Athens.
Maria Kasimati Tsoutsia (MKT): Your installation at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale marks your first large-scale work. How does stepping into that scale feel?
Athina Koumparouli (AK): Paradoxically, scale is the only thing that doesn’t intimidate me—it feels natural. My practice has long involved digging and pulling objects from the earth; it was time for something to emerge from the underground and project forward. The installation is composed of three elements: broken screens, bamboo supports, and mosaics made from cable sections and copper embedded in the ground.
MKT: Your choice of materials creates a striking bridge between the archaeological past and the digital present. Why these specific elements?
AK: All the materials are locally sourced, but they’ve traveled before reaching their destination. I’m interested in their connection to the land and the stories they carry—stories shaped by cycles of exploitation and colonialism that have defined the region for centuries. The screens come from an electronic waste recycling center in Kochi. Screens are objects we see constantly in our daily lives—we’re so closely connected to them, even more than to other people or to ourselves. Here, though, they are elevated on a tall bamboo framework and become almost unrecognizable. Beneath them lie shattered mosaics patterned like waves, alternating between disappearance and reappearance, as archaeological finds often do. I use cable sections—including some from the area’s undersea networks—and copper, a material that belongs both to ancient craft and to contemporary digital infrastructure.
Installing “Deep Sea, Deep Time”, Kochi, India, 2025
MKT: The bamboo structure—a traditional material—creates a vertical link between earth and the digital sphere. How did that decision evolve?
AK: It unfolded organically, initially for practical reasons. In Kochi, as in other parts of Asia, bamboo is widely used in architecture, often as scaffolding. The structure looks as though it’s trying to balance a broken system from another time. Working with local craftsmen and with a material that feels timeless was essential. Again, this duality of old technique and new technology emerges.
Missing Spaces, Installation, wood, Eleusis, 2023
MKT: The concept of “participation” feels central in your work. With the Biennale piece, do you sense a new phase beginning?
AK: Definitely—though it grows out of earlier works. I continue to connect with the archaeological past of a place while approaching the future with archaeological curiosity. The significant change lies in the materials—and the scale. From the moment I arrived in Kochi, I felt that everything could happen there. The city is technologically advanced, yet there’s a strong traditional approach. The environment is simultaneously wild and real, and at the same time deeply damaged. Nature and technology function as one—cables surface like living tree roots. I saw a pole supporting overhead power lines that had been swallowed by a tree and still worked. It’s a vivid image of the complex interdependence between human activity and the natural world.
The Forest as a Site of Future Archaeological Interest, Shapes of Absence, 2025
MKT: Since I met you, I’ve called you “an archaeologist of the future.” You adapt archaeological methodologies to address environmental issues and transform excavation processes into artistic tools—creating powerful witness works from seemingly insignificant materials in such a poetically impetuous way..
AK: In the end, what matters is the interpretation we give to the finds—whether they’re ancient or contemporary objects. Interpretation determines their role.
Excavating the Excavated Soil, Mixed media, 2022
MKT: Your participation in excavations at Appia Antica 39 in Rome feels like a turning point. The collaboration among artist, archaeologist, public and field research seems to have shaped your practice and your later investigations into the irreversible effects of forest fires on natural landscapes.
AK: I’ve traveled a long path with excavations and the underground since Italy in 2022. That experimental collaboration very special and rarely happens. I participated in an ongoing excavation—a familiar setting—but this time as an artist, handling archaeological tools in that capacity. Later in Rome, an ancient stream was revealed to me, and that experience culminated to the research I presented in my solo exhibition this summer, focusing on the devastated landscapes of Evia and Parnitha. I move through time—mixing temporalities, moving back and forth. Today, however, I feel that I’ve risen upward. The broken screens in Kochi seem to belong to another temporality—not ours, but the next.
Souvenirs from the Critical Zone / Chapter 1, Documentation of the process and the public interaction, 2022
MKT: The way you structure your work, often constructs stratigraphies that blur timelines. One cannot easily discern what comes before or after, neither the past nor the future can define you, as if standing before a cosmic time capsule.
AK: Exactly. I perceive matter as a vessel. What I was saying in Italy, the tomb is a vessel for the body, and bones are vessels of information. Then we arrive at digital vessels—hard drives, for example. All of these are one. A hard drive contains copper, which exists as a natural material before the vessel is made. So, what is older? Ultimately, everything blends. It’s a matter of perspective. If you examine a hard drive in the future, beyond the plastic casing, its essence is older than ceramics—it belongs to an earlier biological time. You could say something similar about plastic if you consider its origin in oil.
Souvenirs from the Critical Zone, installation detail, 2022
MKT: Tell me about the stream in Italy—we never discussed the molds.
AK: Whenever I make molds—of a stream or of tree roots—it’s born of a desperate need to preserve a trace of absence as quickly as possible. In the Rome excavation, we uncovered a soil imprint formed by moisture that had survived or centuries. At first, I wanted to capture that stream’s trace, held in the earth for two millennia. But I was also interested in capturing what happened over the next ten days with human presence. In both narratives, I’m not recording an object so much as something that no longer exists. Again, archaeology has this magical ability to open a door to the future.
Fragments of Water, installation view at the Appia Antica 39 excavation site, plaster and iron, 2023
MKT: Do you believe in paradoxical coincidences—what we might call synchronicity—in the creation of ideas?
AK: Yes—and in instinct. I’ll tell you about an event that was decisive in my practice.I was flying at night to a residency in the Netherlands. From the sky, the industrial landscape of Budel-Dorplein—home to zinc factories for over 130 years—was visible. I thought I saw square lakes, which I later searched for on Google Maps until I realized they were solar panels. I learned it’s both an industrial zone and a protected Natura site. I asked to visit and get a tour. Nothing inspired me more than the story the guide told about the eagle that was allowed to live in the chimney, hunting rabbits that dug holes in the mountains to hide waste. These symbiotic narratives of paradoxical coexistence sparked an idea. Isn’t it incredible? An industrial area where pollution has preserved a rare, protected ecosystem.
MKT: Back to Kochi and your upcoming Biennale participation—did you bring back any tangible trace from your trip?
AK: Just one thing: a nutmeg. I had never seen one before. Somehow, that feels paradoxical too.
More than water, more than rain, I need electricity, 2019
Athina Koumparouli’s participation in the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale is the result of ΕΜΣΤ International Curators Visiting Programme (ICVP) and is supported by the 2025 ARTWORKS Grants program, funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and other private donors.