Riccardo Matlakas
London, UK
Riccardo Matlakas is a multidisciplinary artist working across performance, painting, sculpture, and installation. He holds a degree in Sculpture from the University of Fine Arts in Naples and an MA in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes University, with further studies at Goldsmiths and UAL. He is currently conducting research at the Royal College of Art, exploring embodied materiality, affect, and multidisciplinary performance. His practice responds to cultural and political contexts, creating cathartic actions that explore humanity beyond borders and custom.
Matlakas has exhibited internationally, including the Moscow Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, and Prague Quadrennial, with works collected by the Museum of Modern Art in Odesa and the Museum of Palestine in Cape Town. He has participated in residencies worldwide and performed at the DMZ during the PyeongChang Cultural Olympiad. His current EU-funded project, Art4Sea, focuses on ocean protection. He also co-authored Quarantined Lives, a bilingual book bridging art and psychology.
Artist Interview
Q: You describe your work as “phenomenological,” revealing itself through both rational planning and intuitive flow. How do you navigate that balance between structure and spontaneity?
A: Before creating a performance, I engage in a rigorous process that blends observation, contextual research, and inductive methods. I draw from post-positivist and qualitative approaches, studying the place and the behaviour of its people as a living archive. From this, I often craft a story—sometimes sculptural, sometimes invisible, that anchors the work in its environment. Structure emerges through this preparation, but the performance itself unfolds through intuition. Walking becomes a method of encounter, where prediction gives way to presence. The inner state of being shapes how others engage with the work, and intuition guides each next move. I don’t aim to control the outcome, I listen to the moment and let the work reveal itself.
Q: You’ve worked and exhibited in many different countries. How do the environments and cultures you immerse yourself in shape your creative process and the ideas behind your work?
A: Fully! In fact, I usually take a long time before developing a certain work in a country. I merge with the people, talk to them, share our life stories, and learn about the culture. I focus on our meeting points, on our differences. I look for hints of care, what they care about, what I care about, and what we care about in common. I begin to have visions that unfold, sometimes in the blink of an eye, sometimes over years. I do not release works that are not fully mature, which is why I have several works in queue, but I always try not to wait more than five years. Otherwise, they might find other minds to think about them. It is important for me to merge my own world with the world of others, to immerse in their cultures through the common ground we discover in the process.
Q: Your projects frequently address socio‑political and environmental issues. Could you describe a recent work that uses cathartic action to engage viewers on those themes?