Artist’s Statement

I am a graduate of the Department of Economics and of the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In my teenage years, but also during my studies, I studied Social Policy and Sociology, Political Philosophy, History, Philosophy and Psychology.

In my visual expression, I was influenced by Arte povera, Giannis Kounelis, Mario Merz, Richard Long, Logothetis and certainly Yayoi Kusama’s installations, Nancy Spero’s work, Ana Mendieta’s performances and especially Sigalit Ladau’s videos.

In my artistic work, the means of expression are the installation, the video, the performance. I use primary and unprocessed materials of nature, as derivative components, identifying characteristics, but wanting to express innovative tendencies “…the intense passion for the primordial and the earthly as a social perception|” (Heidegger). The clay and gold in the Roman Agora, the marble stones in A-POL(e)IS, my installations with grass and clay, the installation of clay pies in “Eat drink and be happy”, etc.

Even the process is part of my work, as a position and not the completion of the work.

The space is inspiration, charging old and new together, guidance to a continuum, maybe even redemption, purification… The diptychs with the embryonic form made of clay and the seeds that I sow and take care to grow.

I try to cross the old with the new, the ancient with the modern, the memories with the present, the unconscious with the conscious, the overall social with the strictly personal. I rest my work on the soil of the earth, even of an archaeological site, without interfering with it, creating on its side, next to it, in parallel, in parallel time.

I want to communicate irrational feelings of fear, of perishability, of the ephemeral, with the need of the unchanging, the imperishable (gold), birth (seeds), spring, growth, evolution (fresh grass).

The cracks of the material, the soil, but also the immaterial, the culture, the psyche, are a way of expressing my print. Fractures of forms, outstretched hands, scratches on the clay, memories of absence and loss.

As visual practice, I seek discontinuity, interruptions and above all absence. I want it to symbolically appear that the artwork (I) is receding and I am waiting for its completion by the viewer, to want to participate in order to find the absent meaning (see installation with grasses and parts of masks, “On the marks of the nails”, on the wall , “di.p.art.”, “HELIOS”,on the floor).

I investigate trauma, existential, collective, turning to the model of pre-linguistic experience, in order to re-constitute my total object with my visual creation. I recall the feeling, the emotion that I felt and through the action, the sounds, the movement, the colors to awaken the experiences of the viewers to identify their own feelings, communicating with my work. I choose contrasting concepts and materials, green-dry, living-dead, clothed-naked, perishable-imperishable, comingcoming, wrapping-unwrapping, absence-presence, wealth-poverty, help-agony, loss-memory (see “Transformation “, “Fields”, “Condoms”).

I am inspired by the political, historical and social developments in space and time.

I draw elements from the public space, its history and create within it, on the spot, capturing my own contemporary, political, critical speech, a social commentary, inviting and challenging the viewer to recall their memories, to feel the emotions and its values. Thus, in “Eat, drink and be happy” I refer to the exploitation of the wealth-producing sources of developing countries by the countries of the Western capitalist system, “Muds” is a reference to unemployment, the Arab Spring, environmental pollution, the projects ” A-POL(e)IS”, “The Refugees” refer to the refugee crisis, the losses, and “The Enchanted” to alienation and unemployment.

Trajectories… Steps of transition – return, inner paths, of confinement but also of transformation, and liberation, winding – unwinding of a thread that I seek to lead somewhere…