ABOUT

Bill Balaskas is an artist, theorist, and educator based in London. Originally trained as an economist in Greece, he went on to study art in the United Kingdom. Informed by this interdisciplinary background, his practice interrogates socioeconomic and political systems through the lens of contemporary utopias and dystopias. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; BOZAR, Brussels; EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid; Le CENTQUATRE, Paris; Transmediale, Berlin; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; TENT, Rotterdam; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; ARTIUM, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Whitstable Biennale; Almeida Garret Galeria Municipal do Porto; and the British Film Institute, London. His lectures and lecture-performances have been hosted by the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale; Tate Modern; 11th Sharjah Biennial; Musée du Louvre; University of Oxford; ; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; Tate Liverpool; Warburg Haus, Hamburg; De Bijloke Muziekcentrum, Ghent; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2012, he represented the United Kingdom at the London Cultural Olympiad and in Maribor, the European Capital of Culture, while in 2018 he represented Greece at the memorial exhibition for the centenary of the First World War in Vittorio Veneto. In 2018, he won the annual Artist Development Award of the European Investment Bank Institute. Between 2012 and 2020, Balaskas was Editor of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (MIT Press), and in 2020 he edited 'Architectures of Education' on e-flux Architecture. In addition, his essays and articles have been published in the Journal of Visual Culture, Third Text, OnCurating, Revista Arta, Times Higher Education, and Espace Art Actuel, among others. His edited books include 'Fabricating Publics: The Dissemination of Culture in the Post-truth Era' (Open Humanities Press, 2021), and 'Institution as Praxis: New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research' (Sternberg Press, 2020). In 2023-2024, Balaskas was Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, while in March 2024, he was invited by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water as one of fifteen international thinkers to advise the Commission on the future application of its findings. With initial studies in economics (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), he holds a PhD in Critical Writing in Art and Design, and an MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art. Balaskas is Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the School of Arts of Kingston University, where he founded the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts (CePRA) in 2022.