Maria Foka is a fashion artist and founder of The Benchmark, a platform for fashion art practices. After graduating with an MA (Hons) in Architecture, she studied Fashion History and Theory in Central Saint Martins (UAL), Pattern-making and Sewing at Romina Karamanea Fashion School, and obtained experience in the fields of fashion philosophy, design and the clothing industry through various workshops and seminars.
Her work revolves around bodily reflections that derive from the dialogue between the biological and the social self through their performative nature. She uses personal pathologies and mythologies as the benchmark for her inspiration, and infuses the notions of cyborg beings and everyday super-humans into her research and practice.
Maria creates body-machines, wearable sculptures and prosthetics. Her practice has a deliberately broad expression, as she manipulates a plethora of mediums, mainly objets trouvés, fabric, and building materials. She draws from collage-like techniques to assemble her pieces, both analogue and digital. Her creative process is heavily based on connotative generation of forms, while she attempts to find the merit in a postmodern absurdity.
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