“femme des années 80” questions the construction of femininity and the various commonplace stereotypes and rules a mother, a family and society may project about what it is to be(come) a woman.

The artist takes her personal experience and her upbringing in the late 80s in a Greek family living in a Western country as a case in point. "You must always be pretty," "You must take care of your husband and your home," "You must be a good mother…” but at the same time, "You must be a strong and independent woman,”  "You must stay free to do whatever you want with your body," "You must never let any man stop you…” her mother hammered these words every day to shape her into the ideal woman she wanted her to become.

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In “femme des années 80,” Kosmatopoulos turns each of these sometimes conflicting rules into a sculpture. Each piece works as an assemblage of found objects that together tell one story of what a woman should be in the eyes of the society of the ‘90s and beyond. All the pieces have two objects as a common thread that both represent femininity in the collective consciousness; the first is a bra, an article of clothing that shapes the uniqueness of each woman's breast into a standard "half apple" form. The second is a vase, that on the contrary, is shaped like a simplified form of a woman’s body.

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