The Kusama Weekend
Following the highly successful Pop-Up workshops “Waves & Spirals” & “Action Painting”, visual artist Emilia Tsekoura returns to Fougaro Artcenter for a weekend dedicated to Yayoi Kusama and her distinctive artistic world.
Kusama: From Obsession to Infinity
Repetition, accumulation and self-obliteration in the work of Yayoi Kusama
for teenagers and adults
Saturday 17/10 | 12–3 pm and 4–6 pm
—“With just one dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there are the sun, the moon, the earth and hundreds of millions of stars.”
Kusama’s characteristic dots, endless nets and repetitive forms create a world where the boundaries between the viewer, the artwork and the space seem to disappear.
— What is your own mark?
Starting from the concept of repetition and the personal pattern, we will explore the creation of our own “mark”. We will experiment with small drawings and repetitions, before transferring them onto a larger artwork, using acrylics and charcoal.
The only requirement: to bring our own canvas (at least 50 x 70 cm).
Kusama: Where Dots Become Flowers
for children aged 8+
Sunday 18/10 | 11 am–2 pm
—“I spend every day embracing flowers.”
Yayoi Kusama grew up in Japan, in a world full of flowers, and from an early age she began creating images based on repetition, dots and nets. In her works, patterns multiply and expand, creating the feeling of a world without end.
Inspired by Kusama’s spectacular world, we will paint with flowers, dots, eyes (!), patterns and countless little dots. We will experiment with vivid colours and repetitions, creating our own world that seems to continue into infinity.
Emilia Tsekoura
Born in Athens, Emilia Tsekoura studied at the Art Communication & Learning team in Athens (1978-80), at the Boston Museum’s School of Fine Arts (1980-84) and at the same time at Tufts University, graduating with a Bachelor in Arts & Sciences.
Between 1988 and 2013, Emilia taught at the Athens College using differentiation teaching, art therapy and the method of Harvard University’s Project Zero (TFU, Visual Thinking). To this day she has had several solo shows in Greece and the US and has participated in numerous group exhibitions.
She is motivated by concepts originating from her own nature and expressed in autobiographical and expressionist ways: woman, Goddess/Idol, birth, genesis, the ovoid, rebirth. The philosophy of constant change in life, nature and art is always the key principle behind her every work.
One element in her art is symbolism and the translation of icons into archetypes. The egg, the sphere, the round, the zero or “nothing” and their reflections, the heart, the spiral, the geometries of nature and many other familiar symbols and concepts appear in various guises, media and materials throughout her artistic course.
She works in Athens and teaches at the art workshops of Fougaro in Nafplio since 2013.
Anna Koutsafti
Anna Koutsafti is a visual artist based in Glasgow. She studied Fine Art at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges and completed her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art, while in 2022 she received the EU Saltire Scholarship.
Her practice has been presented in exhibitions in France, Romania, the United Kingdom and Greece. Since 2023, she has been an editor of Ghost Press, an independent publishing initiative in Glasgow focusing on artists’ books and collaborations with emerging artists and writers.
She has participated in residencies at the Frans Masereel Centrum and Cove Park.
