The Monopoly of Love

A participatory performance by Eleni Kolliopoulou

Thursday 5th November 2026: Catalyst Arts: 7-9pm

What are we willing to do to win, and what happens when the pursuit of gain gives way to an encounter with tenderness?

Taking place on the closing day of All Manner of Things Shall Be Well at Catalyst Arts, this participatory performance invites the audience into a playful yet thought-provoking exploration of competition, desire, intimacy and our capacity to connect with one another.

Through an unexpected sequence of events, the performance draws on the familiar language of a game to open up a space where the rules of winning and losing begin to shift. Blurring the boundaries between play and reality, public participation and private encounter, it gently unsettles the values that govern our relationships with one another.

Exposing the tension between greed and tenderness, the work unfolds as a poetic proposition: that love cannot flourish through hostility alone, but requires fertile ground in which to take root. Beneath the desire to possess, accumulate and prevail lies the possibility of another kind of encounter—one grounded in presence, vulnerability and care.

With elements of participation and surprise, the performance responds to the exhibition's concerns through humour, intimacy and unexpected gestures, inviting us to reconsider how we relate to one another and the worlds we create together.

Artist Statement

My practice unfolds through performance, moving image, installation, and painting, exploring the body as a site where personal, social, and ecological realities converge. I approach it as a porous, relational, and politically charged terrain—one that is continuously shaped by memory, power, environment, and encounters with others.

Performance is at the core of my practice. I use the body not as a vehicle for representation but as a living medium through which perception, vulnerability, and transformation can emerge. Through duration, repetition, ritual, and embodied attention, my work investigates how gestures carry cultural histories while simultaneously opening possibilities for resistance, care, and reimagining collective futures.

My artistic process is rooted in attentive observation and responsiveness to context. Each work develops through dialogue with a specific place, its social and environmental conditions, and the people who inhabit it. Influenced by Butoh, somatic practices, improvisation, and participatory methodologies, I seek to cultivate situations in which the boundaries between performer, audience, and environment become fluid, allowing new forms of encounter and shared experience to arise.

At a time marked by ecological collapse, social fragmentation, and accelerating systems of extraction, I understand artistic practice as a form of embodied inquiry. My work creates spaces where uncertainty, vulnerability, and interdependence can be experienced collectively. I am interested in how performance can challenge dominant ways of knowing by slowing perception, amplifying overlooked relationships, and making visible the often-invisible forces that shape our lives.