Maria Gkoutra

Museologist

mariagoutra@gmail.com

Maria Gkoutra is a Museologist. She studied Archaeology at the University of Ioannina and Museum Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Her research interests are: the relationship between architecture and museology, museums in their urban environment, ephemeral artistic intervantions in the urban space. For the last eight years she has been exploring different paths in the domain of performing arts. She has attended workshops in physical theater, dance theater, applied drama, performance art and contemporary art. She continues her studies at the National Technical University of Athens at the Master’s program: Research in Architecture: Design- Space-Culture.

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As part of her studies at the Scenography Laboratory LSA, Maria worked on A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, creating a video installation.

Excerpt from the play
Nora (picking up her bag): Oh, Torvald! Then the miracle of miracles would have to happen.
Torvald: The miracle of miracles!
Nora: You and I would have to change so much… Oh, Torvald, I don’t believe in miracles anymore.

In this video installation, the theatre stage transforms into an environment filled with multiple screens surrounding the viewer. As the door opens, the audience enters a space where they are invited not only to observe but to participate through direct, immersive experience.

Twelve videos unfold scenes from Nora’s life, forming a visual diary. Nora is ever-present within this layered environment, wishing to share these intimate moments of her story with each viewer.

Following her studies in the Master’s Program at the National Technical University of Athens, Research in Architecture: Design – Space – Culture, Maria created the installation GARDENS: Wild & Cultivated, through which she explores the concept of self-portraiture as a spatial experience. Focusing on the “garden” as a microcosm and a dynamic space of transition, the installation proposes an approach where memory, the senses, and the movement of the viewer become essential tools for reading the space.

The corridor of the Plastic Arts Workshop at NTUA was transformed into an environment of scent, sound, and materiality, using test tubes and glass bottles that act as carriers of fragments of memory. Combined with subtle sounds from the workshop itself, the space acquires a multisensory dimension that invites visitors to engage in a calm yet immersive exploration.

The journey into the installation — descending the staircase and entering in silence — heightens the sense of transition, placing the viewer in a space detached from the outside world, where free movement and personal interpretation become central to the experience.