Artist Statement
Beans for soup hover over a Bernina sewing machine in my home studio, branded, Domestic Performance Agency. I make soups like I would improvise a dance. Hospitality I a choreographic rite. I dress performers, although I perform naked. DPA was a way to merge motherhood into artisthood. I’ve worked with indigo for years, keeping a live fermenting culture for over a decade. Blue marked the birth of my daughter, a color intuited into the DPA toolbox. The materials I work with are usually found, repurposed, gifted. I am interested in life-cycles of everyday materials and the choices we have as artists. My relationship to dance and movement plays out and has an extension in the way I work with textiles “decomposing to recompose” is a choreographic design prompt that is implemented in the way I relate to materials. I’m suspended in process materiality is dictated by a duration.
Photo credit Whitney Browne Word Salad Dance Dressing Judson Church 2022
Bio
Athena Kokoronis is an interdisciplinary artist whose work expands across art, food, dance, pedagogical engagements, and design. Born out of motherhood, her art brand, Domestic Performance Agency (DPA) is a creative protective container for process, hospitality, and experimentation. Costuming dance is elemental to the DPA. She was 2023 Cynthia Hazen Ponsky and Leon Ponsky Rome Prize fellow with Jasmine Hearn for their design collaborations. DPA is represented by the Lydia Rodrigues Collection (LRCNYC.ONLINE). Athena Kokoronis published CookBook Domestic Performance Agency with Yonkers International Press (YIP) in conjunction with Dance & Process series at The Kitchen in 2018 and a second book in 2019 in conjunction with The New School. Her performance works have been presented at Danspaceproject in Draftwork series and by Movement Research at Judson. She was a 2019-2022 Movement Research Artist in Resident. Notable work is a 24 -hr Diner performance self produced at Domestic Performance Agency 2022 &2023.
www.domesticperformanceagency.com