About the Artist
Olga Koumoundouros
Olga Koumoundouros (b. 1965 - ) is an American sculptor and artist born in New York, New York and based in Los Angeles.
She grew up in a working class family in Yonkers, New York, and was raised by her grandparents who were immigrants from Greece. She moved to Vermont to get a degree in environmental studies. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 2001.
Her sculptures and installations address issues of real estate, gentrification and social justice. After her neighbors' house was abandoned, she occupied the space and transformed it into a work of art.
"I think this combination of urban and rural contexts and educational programs in my youth inform how I came to see the intersections between social, cultural, natural, and geographic environments. This is a part of my artwork, which contemplates the connections between exchanges of energy from our collective labors, biochemical reactions in material processes, and efforts of self nurturance. I am thinking about how all of these come together in different configurations to impact all lives. All these methodologies of exchange can connect across difference—they can be discernible bridges of a variety of sorts, through different kinds of choices, actions and intentions. This framework has a social and ecological lens at its heart."
