Visual Artist, Professor ASFA, Director of studio11asfa 

Vassilis Vlastaras was born in Athens in 1963 and grew up at Argos.  

In his visual practice, Vassilis Vlastaras creates large-scale, site-specific installations, experimenting with a wide range of media including painting, drawing, photography, video, artist books, real-time video and sound performances, as well as interactive computer-based installations. Through this diverse body of work, he explores the relationship between art and urban space, the concept of ephemerality, and the interplay between spatial movement, material, and sound. His practice frequently merges different media, actions, sound poetry, text, and various heterogeneous, scalable objects.

At the core of his work lies a focus on interactivity and multimedia. Vlastaras consistently investigates the tension between the appetite for life and the frenzy of death, as well as the personal and social dimensions of loss, oblivion, history, memory, and the subsequent processes of remembrance and memorialisation.

He has been teaching at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) since 1999.

As Director of Studies at Studio 11 of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), Vassilis Vlastaras fosters an open and supportive environment that encourages deep engagement with the artistic process at the highest level. He cultivates an active and dynamic community of students, encouraging them to realise and strengthen their creative potential through experimentation, dialogue, and the practice of fine art in all its forms. Working side by side in an open studio setting, students are encouraged to engage across disciplines, creating a fertile ground for crossovers between diverse artistic practices.

Vlastaras was the co-founder of PLATFORMES (2002–2008), a collective based in Athens composed of visual artists, art theorists, musicians, and filmmakers. Between 2006 and 2010, he served as the lead coordinator of the Utopia Project, an annual summer residency program for artists, developed in collaboration with internationally renowned artists, theorists, and political scientists. The Utopia Workshops were hosted by ASFA at its annex in Rethymno, Crete, where Vlastaras delivered a series of lectures and seminars each year, focused on the residency’s thematic interpretation of “utopia.”

Since 2013, he has been the founder and artistic director of asfaBBQ, an international gathering for artists, theorists, students, and audiences engaged in time-based arts. In 2019, he co-founded ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture, a continually evolving platform dedicated to experimenting with the boundaries between artistic production, the public sphere, urban experience, and contemporary art education.

Email: vvlastaras@asfa.gr