Mikhail Karikis
Visual Arts recipient 2024
Mikhail Karikis (b. 1975) is a Greek-British artist working with moving image, sound, performance and other media. Through collaborations with individuals and/or communities located beyond the circles of contemporary art, he develops socially embedded projects that prompt an activist imaginary and rouse the potential to invent hopeful and sustainable futures. Focusing on listening as an artistic methodology, and the voice as a socio-political material, Karikis explores themes of environmental and social justice. His projects highlight alternative modes of action and solidarity while nurturing dignity, care and a trust in the possible.
Recent solo exhibitions include Songs for the Storm to Come at HOME, Manchester, 2024; Acoustics of Resistance, Void Art Centre, Derry, Northern Ireland 2024; and Because We are Together at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, which included six key audio-visual installations from Karikis’ work over the last decade: Weather Orchestra (2022), Surging Seas (2022), Ferocious Love (2020), No Ordinary Protest (2018), Children of Unquiet (2014) and Sounds from Beneath (2011–2012).
Karikis exhibits internationally, with solo exhibitions hosted by Tate Liverpool; Tate St Ives; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Casino Forum d’art Contemporain, Luxemburg; and Whitechapel Gallery, London; among others. He has shown in group exhibitions at 54th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 9, 19th Biennale of Sydney, 2nd Aichi Triennale, 3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2nd Riga Biennale, 5th Mardin Biennale, 3rd Aichi Triennale and elsewhere.
“When I look at the work I have created over the past two decades, I realise that it bursts with songs and noises voiced by thousands of people, young and old, in all their diversity, seeking to harmonise with each other and the environments that surround them. Receiving the Paul Hamlyn Award is a recognition not only of my work, but also of my collaborators. I thank all the participants, the colleagues, the institutions and funders that have believed in my work and have enabled me to develop my projects. Together we have travelled, cared for each other and cultivated hope in a political present that keeps taking it away. It is also an acknowledgment for art practices that dare to step out of the studio to engage directly with the overlooked and the neglected. Awards with such visibility communicate to mainstream culture and to the art world that art is made by the people for the people, it is a way to practice our citizenship and a catalyst for a better, more hopeful world.”
Examples of work
SONGS FOR THE STORM TO COME, 2024
Single-channel video, colour, stereo sound, 11 minutes 30 seconds, and 8‑channel video, colour (synchronised), 29 minutes. Songs for the Storm to Come focuses on collective and individual responses to the impending transformations caused by climate change as forecast by scientists, and searches for ways to activate our trust in hopeful shared futures. Karikis worked with Manchester based SHE cooperative choir for women and non-binary people and sound researchers from the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. A central film features movement, narration and sound performances that propose listening as a way to cultivate empathy, foster climate care and prepare us for what is to come. An accompanying constellation of eight videos utilises the resonances of the participants’ voices to sculpt through vibration models of landscapes made of sand and water, evoking the potential for collective voicing and action to conjure new shared horizons.
Presented at HOME, Manchester, UK (2024).
THE WEATHER ORCHESTRA, 2022
Installation: 4‑channel video, 5.1 surround sound. The Weather Orchestra is an ode to the elements; rejoices in the power of sound-making, turns to folk song in search of ancient wisdom, sentiment and connection with the elements, and proposes listening as a means of learning the language of nature. Three projections evoke a weather system with musicians on instruments imitating sounds of natural phenomena, while human voices sing: a Syrian refugee asks the rain to become ‘mute’ while mourning family he lost at sea. A Danish singer asks the sun to sprout her seeds. A Madeiran islander implores the fog to clear and a Portuguese singer repels a tempest.
Presented at: Void Art Centre, Derry, Northern Ireland (2024); Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Exeter, UK, (2024); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, (2023); MOMUs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, (2023); Sismografo, Porto, Portugal, (2022); Lisboa Soa, Caprintarias de Sao Lazaro, Lisbon, Portugal, (2022); Spor Festival, Aarhus, Denmark, (2022).
NO ORDINARY PROTEST, 2018
Single-channel video, colour, stereo sound. Working across film, sound and performance, No Ordinary Protest uncovers children’s political voice and eco-activist imagination. It adopts the children’s science fiction novel ‘The Iron Woman’ (1993) by Ted Hughes as an ecofeminist parable of the power of sound to effect empathy, physical and socio-political transformation. Throughout the school year, Karikis engaged with a group of thirty 7‑year-old Bangladeshi students in East London. The children gather to debate and play, and find a shared sense of justice and the need for solidarity with all creatures.
Presented at: Cukrarna Centre for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, (2024); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, (2023); International Triennial Art and Environment 8, Slovenia, (2021); Tokyo Photographic Arts Museum, Japan, (2019). MIMA, Middlesbrough, (2019); Dazibao, Montreal, Canada, (2019); and Whitechapel Gallery, London, (2018).
THE CHALK FACTORY, 2017
15-channel video installation, 15-audio channel audio, variable. The Chalk Factory was created with a group of 70 factory workers with learning disabilities on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. The project foregrounds disability’s own cultural history and examines attitudes to productivity, the body and social function, and raises ethical questions about disability and labour.
Presented at: MORI Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, (2019) and European Capital of Culture, Aarhus, Denmark, (2017).
