Visual Artist

Maria Papacharalambous

Works

I divide my work in two sections.

The first section is influenced by an Odysseas Elytis quote: "Bad poets are nourished by events, the mediocre from emotions and the good from the transformation of nothing into something”.

These are series of artworks, with autonomous plasticity, humble and penetrative exercises of the intuition, looking into the deepest landscapes of the subconscious and collective memory. They compact the whole development and analysis of the visual exercise, based on the notions of memory, time and space, but also of feelings like pain and joy. They bring to the surface imagined landscapes that demand their existence as archetypes of the deepest truth of the world. This demand is offset by the use of irony and humor as ways of self- knowledge and balance. The whole process of art becomes an attitude, a permanent fight to know ourselves, to heal our wounds. Some of these works, with the help of technology, gain another dimension, entering screenplays and becoming protagonists in short films, which are often collaborative in their execution.

The second section is influenced by a Bertrand Russell quote: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable sorrow for the suffering of mankind.”

These are research-based projects, resulting from my need to seek knowledge and to share it, an extension of my creative engagement and another way of activating intervention. They arise from the exploration of the meaning and aims of art, but also of the meaning of our existence. The projects propose a "meta-aesthetic" worldview with roots in a philosophical and ethical approach that embraces ‘learning how to live’ and does not separate the artistic act from the lived reality of "survival exercises" that color existential impasses. I think of them as a productive force against modern nihilism, social sculptures where we create our lives as a work of art.

All the works are navigable from the list on the left.