Portfolio Categories: artworks

Union Stewardettes

The project examines the emergence of women’s labor movements in early 20th-century Greece through the lens of the Raisin Workers’ Union of Aigio, “Mutual Aid.” This pioneering women’s union, established to safeguard the economic and professional interests of female workers, provides a powerful narrative of collective action and gendered labor history. Archival materials such as membership registers, meeting minutes, correspondence with the Ministry of Labor, election ballots, wage records, and even fingerprints in place of signatures were incorporated into the artwork, offering tangible traces of a community striving for rights and recognition.

Central to the project is the act of weaving, a practice historically associated with feminine purity and domesticity, contrasted here with the harsh realities and risks of industrial labor. Through the technique of paper-weaving, fragments from the union’s archives are interlaced to create visual patterns that echo the structural networks of solidarity formed by these women. The juxtaposition of these materials transforms the archival into the tactile, where the threads of history and gender consciousness intertwine.

By unfolding the stories of the women who were part of “Mutual Aid,” the project reveals broader narratives of gendered labor struggles and the intersection of private and public spheres. The work challenges traditional notions of weaving as domestic and passive, instead framing it as a medium of resistance and storytelling. In doing so, it not only reexamines the historical role of women’s labor unions but also foregrounds the ongoing dialogue about gender, work, and collective action.

Exhibition virtual tour: https://primarolia.com/virtual_exhibition_2021.html

photoς: Christos Spanos // Primarolia © 2021

All The Birds

The project All the Birds is a collaboration between artist Maria Varela and the women’s community of Di Mulieri in Metsovo, Greece. Drawing inspiration from the tradition of woven dowries, a practice deeply rooted in the Vlach heritage of the region, the participating women selected their favorite decorative motifs, called “birds” in the Vlach dialect, from textiles their mothers had made for them. These motifs were combined to create a new hybrid design that disrupted the traditional creative chain, which demands the exact preservation of patterns to ensure continuity. The new design was collectively woven into a cape, an archetypically masculine garment that was reimagined and feminized as a symbolic act of female empowerment.

The women wore the cape and were photographed in their favorite locations in Metsovo, creating personalized portraits that highlight the interplay between individuality and collective identity. The project bridges past and present, exploring how heritage is preserved, transformed, and personalized. The locations chosen for the photographs, both indoors and outdoors, underscore the connection between the women’s identities and the landscape of Metsovo, a region known for steadfastly preserving its social and cultural traditions.

All the Birds moves seamlessly between the collective and the personal, presenting this duality as complementary rather than opposing. It questions how cultural heritage can evolve and it challenges notions of authorship and tradition by inviting collaborative reinterpretation. Through the transformation of the masculine cape into a shared symbol of feminine strength and the creation of hybrid patterns that tell collective and individual stories, the project celebrates the power of community and the dynamic interplay between memory, identity, and creativity.

In the creation of the artwork All the Birds – Poulioi Di Multou participated: Vasiliki Theodoraki, Evdokia Bisa, Aphrodite Katsora, Chrysoula Stavraki, Eugenia Tzalonikou, Marilena Tzalonikou, Charoula Tzalonikou, Yolanda Tsarouchi, Maria Vadevouli, Doukitsa Zarkadi.

Sound Documentary on the creation of the project by Evita Theochari for dimotikoradiofono
LISTEN HERE

Special thanks to the Municipality of Metsovo for their support and the provision of a work space.

Nisos

The project Nisos draws from anthropologist Margaret Kenna’s extensive research on the island of Anafi, where she studied the dynamics of three key communities: political exiles, the local residents and migrants who relocated to Athens. These communities, though distinct, share Anafi as their common point of identity, influencing and shaping each other’s evolution. The project visualizes these interactions and histories through a woven textile and three 3D-printed ceramics.

At the heart of Nisos is a woven textile whose pattern encodes the numerical influx of political exiles to Anafi during the 1930s, a period when their population surpassed that of the locals. The loom’s warp threads reflect this influx, creating a motif that also incorporates three traditional embroidery designs found on Anafi textiles: two peacocks and a deer. These motifs meet in decorative bands, symbolizing the exchanges and connections between the three communities. The woven textile serves as a material record of these interactions, blending numerical data with Anafi’s craft traditions.

The project extends its exploration of social structures through 3D-printed ceramics inspired by the uniquely shaped beehives (formed to protect bees from the strong wind) used on the island until the 1950s. The hive, a space embodying functional social organization, reflects the community structures developed by the exiles to ensure their survival. The design of the hive incorporates the same woven motif as the textile.

Another element of the project references the baskets used for exchanging goods between Anafi’s locals and its migrants in Athens. These baskets, sealed with fabric and inscribed with sender and recipient details, symbolize the island’s networks of exchange. In Nisos, the ceramic hives are sealed with fabric bearing Anafiot proverbs—phrases preserved in their original Greek by Margaret Kenna, underscoring the cultural continuity embedded in her archival work.

Nisos questions how community and identity are shaped through shared histories and material exchanges, offering a narrative that intertwines personal, cultural, and communal dimensions of Anafi’s past.

Ceramics: Nikos Athanasopoulos – Sealed Earth Ceramics Studio

Photographer: Stathis Mamalakis

Finite-State Family Structures

The work ‘‘Finite-State Family Structures’’ by Maria Varela takes the popular family house
as its starting point. Through architectural research and personal data, she creates a new
narrative in the absence of the human element. Influenced by the HYDROEXPRESS
space, the artist presents a house-like construction that extends over three levels, as a
reference to the three-story building that in Greece traditionally houses the extended
family. Inside she places the “intermediate space”, the space between the body of the
occupant in the house and its walls, as depicted in architectural plans of the early 20th
century which aim at finding the minimum possible functional space in working class
houses. The empty space takes shape to imply the human scale while commenting on the
physical – and mental – adaptability of the inhabitant to environments structured by mass
design, and the impossibility of implementing the opposite process.
The transparency of the house makes it an eye-catching interior that evokes the family
vitrine, a piece of furniture that gives an elaborate picture of the social class of the family –
or the one to which it would like to belong – and is addressed to the visitors. Like the
showcase is addressed to a “third” party, the whole house is transformed from a closed
circuit into a public condition through inviting non-habitants inside. From her grandmother’s
housekeeping book ‘‘Practical Greek Cooking’’ which includes not only recipes but also
good behavior guidelines for housewives, Maria Varela later recognized the experiential
application of its content in her family memories. She chooses to focus on the habits that
time discards over the passing of generations. A series of mind-based recipes becomes
the occasion for a dish made by the artist to be offered during the opening, addressing the
audience as guests, and reversing the process of offering into something ominous.
By referring to the home literally, as a space, and metaphorically, as a series of protocols
and rules, Maria Varela focuses on what is left remaining and what stays on the sidelines.
The empty space around the body that is not shaped and the recipes that will not continue
to be made draw the viewer’s attention to the “invisible”, with the artist’s house
construction acting as an abstract miniature of the symptoms of the Greek family. Finally,
the dialogue Maria Varela and the artist and founder of the space Marina Papadaki about
their family stories becomes a structural way to approach the work that also influences its
design: the inclusion in the installation of the latter’s crystal glasses that are part of her
dowry and an item displayed in her grandmother’s family vitrine.

Eva Vaslamatzi

ghost tree

“Intimacy: A modern tyranny” the exhibition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival that brings cinema and the visual arts to a direct dialogue. The Festival commissioned 12 Greek visual artists to watch and comment in any way they wanted, on a film from the film festival.

Ghost Tree is inspired from Azra Deniz Okyay’s film Ghosts

The work Ghost Tree is a mosaic of ceramic bathroom tiles forming a tree of life motif: a primordial symbol found in all cultures, but particularly identified with the East, where it is thought to originate. Ceramic tiles are a Turkish tradition. However in contrast to the multitude of motifs and colors they customarily display, only black and white tiles are used here, reminiscent of the western industrial aesthetic. The way in which the motif is formed, borrows the semantics of the drawing grid used for traditional embroidery and weaving motifs. Thus the process of designing a new identity emerges, an identity that leaves the colourful past behind, giving way to a new, dark regime.

📷 Aris Rammos

one piece of cloth – an “invented” emblem

The project investigates the construction of Greek national identity through the symbolic language of flags and national costumes, exploring how memory, history, and myth are interwoven into invented traditions. Inspired by the Flags of Freedom collection of the National Historical Museum and the Costume Museum of the Lyceum Club of Greek Women, the project reimagines symbols and motifs from revolutionary flags and national costumes. Through digital processing, symbols from 45 different flags were transcribed into binary patterns, and an algorithm identified common elements, creating a new emblem. This motif, embroidered in gold thread using traditional Byzantine techniques, was integrated into a patchwork of fabric remnants from iconic garments like the fustanella and the Amalia dress, emblematic of Greece’s transition to nationhood.

The work includes a flag and a video essay documenting the artistic process, emphasizing the interplay between archival material, cultural heritage, and creative reinterpretation. The flag operates as a space of memory, unifying fragments of history and material culture into a new symbolic surface that reflects both the multiplicity of past identities and the constructed nature of national narratives.

The project raises critical questions about the role of cultural symbols in shaping collective memory and identity. It examines how traditions are invented, standardized, and transformed into tools of historical and ideological continuity. By incorporating remnants of garments once associated with rural life, revolution, and statehood, the project bridges the personal with the collective, making the past tangible in the present.

Through its self-referential methodology, the work highlights the fluidity of identity construction, The flag that was created constitutes a place of memory, a new framework in which highlights the fluidity of identity construction. Its intention is a negotiation of historical consciousness.

Artistic research, texts, video editing: Maria Varela

Narration: Yiota Argyropoulou

Camerawork, Photography: Aggeliki Hatzi

Music: Vassilis Moschas (Polygrains)

Sound recording: Nikolas Konstantinou

English subtitles: Penny Saccopoulou-Valtazanou

 

The project was a commission of the Museum of  the history of Greek Costume – Lykeion ton Hellinidon.

photographs: Studio Kominis

Revolting Bodies II exhibition photos: Panos Kokkinias, © ATOPOS cvc

Data Altar

The project Data Altar explores the intersection of personal experience, cultural rituals, and archival production, presented through three interconnected ritual actions. The first involves a year-long collection of binary personal data (July 2019–July 2020), where each day is recorded as “good” or “bad” based on socially defined criteria such as mood, health, work performance, love, and social life. This binary diary forms a geometric pattern, visualizing the subjective experience of time within the constraints of Western cultural norms that define personal success.

The second action is a video performance that depicts a fictional ritual of purification and consolidation of the collected data. Drawing inspiration from materials and practices of non-Western spiritual rituals while structured within the semiology of scientific laboratory experiments, the performance blends the spiritual and rational. Through a sequence of kinesiology, accompanied by a soundtrack referencing Eastern spiritual music and Byzantine psalms, the ritual “heals” the bad days, preparing the pattern for weaving. Polyphonic traditions are used as a mantra, creating a meditative soundscape that bridges personal and collective experience.

The third action involves weaving the purified binary pattern into a textile. Weaving, as a practice, transforms time into matter, embodying the binary diary in a tangible form. The resulting fabric serves as a material archive, challenging viewers to connect with the subjective nature of data and its aesthetic transformation.

Data Altar raises questions about how personal experiences are filtered through cultural norms and systems of measurement. It examines the role of rituals—both spiritual and scientific—as frameworks for interpreting and organizing human experiences. By recontextualizing everyday data into a narrative of purification and material creation, the project invites reflection on the intersections of personal identity, collective memory, and the evolving nature of cultural practices in a data-driven world.

Concept, Art Director: Maria Varela

Cinematographer, Editor: Michalis Konstantatos

Choreographer, Performer: Angeliki Chatzi

Music: Vasilis Moschas (Polygrains)

Light designer: Yannis Fotou

Rugs of Life

The Rugs of Life project bridges traditional Moroccan Amazigh weaving motifs with contemporary algorithmic processes, reimagining cultural heritage in a new typology of patterns. The project began with a visit to Cooperative Tawnza in the Ait Hamza valley, renowned for its high-quality wool and its women artisans’ exceptional traditional rugs. Led by Afkir Eto, an experienced local weaver, the cooperative represents a collective effort towards economic empowerment and cultural preservation. These artisans, deeply connected to their craft, aspire to gain international recognition, ensuring a sustainable income and a broader audience for their work, bypassing male intermediaries

The project’s starting point lies in the motifs traditionally woven into Amazigh rugs—encoded narratives that reflect personal and collective stories. Using Conway’s Game of Life algorithm, these motifs are deconstructed and transformed within a cellular automaton environment. Cellular automata are mathematical models consisting of grids of cells that evolve based on simple rules, creating intricate patterns over successive algorithmic generations. This process parallels the evolution of cultural heritage, where each algorithmic generation builds upon the previous one, transforming traditional symbols into organic, dynamic entities.

The newly generated patterns were compiled into a glossary and shared with the cooperative. Local artisans, drawing on their deep expertise, incorporated these deconstructed motifs into new rug compositions. This collaboration redefines traditional rug weaving as a hybrid process that merges algorithmic innovation, cultural knowledge, and human craftsmanship.

Installed in this way, Rugs of Life explores how digital tools can sustain and reinterpret traditional crafts, fostering cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration. By weaving together human narratives, technological innovation, and ancestral practices, the project highlights the potential for digital technologies to act as mediators in preserving and transforming cultural heritage while addressing broader questions about identity, community, and creative evolution.

Theodoros Chiotis text : Warp and Woof_ on Maria Varela’s Rugs of Life 

The Moirae

The three Moirae are transformed from mythical entities to three algorithms and re-define the destiny of western art archival resources. The mythical beings acquire algorithmic substance and derive material from the open licensed repositories of Western culture heritage through the Europeana accumulator. The stored files become operational after being fragmented and rebuilt through structural modification.

In Greek mythology the three Moirae are:
• Clotho who spun the thread of life.
• Lachesis who measured the thread of life, allotted to each person with her measuring rot and decided who will take each part and how
he/she will be benefited.
• Atropos was the cutter of the thread of life.

The myth defines the function and behaviour model of the three algorithms.

As the mythical Clotho selects and prepares the raw material, the Clotho algorithm draws all the images to be processed by moirae.
Images are selected based on three criteria:
1. date. The images selected were added to Europeana platform three
days earlier following that Moirae appear on the third day of birth.
2. the file being edited is an image from an art collection
3. the edited files are licensed of free re-use and shared content

The algorithmic Lachesis deconstructs the images collected by Clotho.
After setting the number of pixels per line, it creates a continuous thread that is unwrapped on the screen. The way the new remodelled material is presented draws visual inspiration from textile weaving. The thread remains continuous and rotates from right to left and then from left to right creating an endless weft. This alignment creates new patterns through the relationships that neighbouring pixels develop.

The Atropos algorithm cuts pieces of this new digital woven and transforms them into standalone physical objects, giving them a separate unique life to live.

Please follow the link  to watch Lachesis performance which is live and different every day depended on each day’s registries at Europeana platform.

Web developer: Thanos Eleftherakos