Maria Paschalidou is an artist researcher. Her conceptual work includes intermediate participatory events and spatial installations, in which static and moving image are combined with sound, projection, text and participatory interaction. She holds a PhD in Lens-based Media from De Montfort University, in the UK, with a theoretical and practical dissertation focusing on the performativity of these media and the formation of phantasmagoric subjects in public and participatory spaces. She also holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in the USA, where her photographic dissertation focused on the optical systems used in human medical monitoring. Additionally, she completed a BA in Economics at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.
From 2019 to 2021, Paschalidou was a fellow of the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, conducting postdoctoral research on the performative aspects of political loss, in collaboration with the Department of Social Anthropology at Panteion University in Athens. Her research investigates actions that create displacements and challenge established positions such as artist-spectator, words-image, and theory-praxis. She has curated two international exhibitions, Ekecheiria in Chicago (2004) and The Art of Artist Statement (co-curatorial) in Chicago (2005). She also initiated and organized participatory collective long-duration public performances, including Visibility (2007) and The Bankorgs both of them in Athens (2015). Her work has been featured in international and Greek publications, including Routledge, Bloomsbury, and Ekkremes, and exhibited across Europe, the USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, and Asia.
Since 2021, she has been an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts and Audiovisual Media at the Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Thessaly, Volos.
