VASKOS are a multidisciplinary artistic duo made up of Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis created in Athens in 2014. They focus on the notion of artistic, sexual, and national identity, which they explore in a hybrid and playful way, through a variety of practices such as performance, photography, drawings, ceramics, publications, and curation. VASKOS deal with ephemeral and everyday materials, converse with various cultural references, claim Greekness and international avant-garde status at the same time, use free association with words, texts, objects and materials, opt for open homoeroticism, camp weird identities, and anticipate eco-queerness. Recently, their work has been presented at NEON Organization, Athens Photo Festival, EMST, PCAI, Greek National Opera, TRANSFORM queer festival Marseille, HKW Berlin, Phenomenon Anafi.
Performance has a pivotal role in VASKOS’s practice. Performativity is a tool or artistic methodology that can be expressed through staged or manipulated photography, video performance, and staged performance. At the same time, VASKOS are key members of the theatrical performance group Nova Melancholia, Vassilis Noulas being the director of the group, and Kostas Tzimoulis the set, costume, and lighting designer. Nova Melancholia presents highly acclaimed multiform theatre productions, realized with the collaboration of artists coming from different fields (actors, dancers, singers).
At the core of VASKOS’s work is the joy of artistic coexistence and sharing creativity, a celebratory and cherishing feeling of the everyday experience. The sense of care and responsibility for one another is important, and by extension the demand for equity and fairness in the community. VASKOS try looking upon the ‘artistic duo’ as a contemporary artistic practice, a conscious choice that offers an alternative model of artistic symbiosis and complicity, testing the limits of the traditional identity and the common singularity/oneness of the subject. They create hybrid environments somewhere between reality and fiction. Reclaiming modernism under the conditions of queer aesthetics lies at the core of the poetics of VASKOS, who often use the techniques of collage and assemblage to execute unexpected reconstructions of bodies, inspired by Dadaist freedom.
Important part of their practice has been the initiation of self-organized spaces as well as the participation in the organization of collective events (Green Park – Athens cultural occupation, DIY-performance biennial “No Future”, EIGHT / ΤΟ ΟΧΤΩ – critical institute for arts and politics). VASKOS often curate group events, or exhibitions, as a mode of extended research. VASKOS believe in the cooperative and public nature of art because they feel that thus its inherent social and political role gets empowered.
Vassilis Noulas is a visual artist and a theatre director based in Athens. He is a founding member and the director of the theatre collective Nova Melancholía. In his work, he attempts to re-approach elements of the Greek and the European traditions of “melancholy”, hence gradually constructing his personal spiritual genealogy. He studied Drama at the University of Athens, Visual Arts at the ASFA and pursued postgraduate studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. His work has been presented at the Athens Festival, the Onassis Stegi, the Santarcangelo Festival, the Greek National Opera, the Athens Biennale, as well as in squats, apartments and self-managed spaces. For the performance “SEBASTIAN” he has won the Performance Art Award 2023 by the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Art Critics. “The Lair”, first feature film, premiered at the Thessaloniki Festival 2019. He is the author of five books of poetry and short prose. In recent years he has taken part in several bottom-up city movements: Mavili Collective, Theatre Embros Occupancy, Green Park Athens Cultural Occupancy.
www.novamelancholia.gr
https://biblionet.gr/
Kostas Tzimoulis is a visual artist based in Athens. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and pursued postgraduate studies at the Westminster University, London and the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, in the Netherlands. He has presented seven solo exhibitions: Matters of Mounting (2025) curated by Christoforos Marinos at City of Athens Arts Center ; Predela (2020) at the EIGHT – a critical institute for arts and Politics, Athens ; No Armature (2018) at Asklipiou 99, Athens ; Yucca (2015) at the Green Park occupation, Athens ; Useless Passages (2008) at the Artis Causa Gallery, Thessaloniki ; Recycled Spaces (2007) at the PCC, Belgrade. He is a core member of the theatrical performance group Nova Melancholia, contributing to the dramaturgy and often as a set, costume, and lighting designer. Tzimoulis was also a member of the artist-led occupation at Green Park and co-organized the DIY Performance Biennial No Future in 2016. He is part of the creative team at EIGHT / ΤΟ ΟΧΤΩ – a critical institute for arts and Politics. Currently, he is an Appointed Lecturer at the Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly.
www.kostastzimoulis.wordpress.com
https://8athens.wordpress.com/about/
VASKOS 