Naomi Velissariou

Naomi Velissariou (Bilzen, 1984) is a Greek-Belgian director, writer, actor and performance artist with an ongoing fascination with the fluidity of current-day identities and the ways these are leveraged in our current image culture. She is an exponent of a generation of socially engaged performing artists and is not afraid of mounting the barricades on behalf of this generation. Velissariou uses philosophical, scientific as well as personal ideas as a basis for performances with a rich visual language.

During her collaborations with sound producer Joost Maaskant and visual artists Frederik Heyman and Jan Hoek, Velissariou developed a visual signature around the ‘suffering pop icon’ alter ego that allowed her to express herself on themes like self-hatred, misogyny and fear of failure, which have become taboo in an age of likes, views and followers. The idea of ‘suffering’ has a central role in her work, specifically the suffering of female characters from the classical era to the current image culture.

Besides her own work as a theatre maker, Naomi also performs as an actress in theatre, films and television series.