Amalia participated as a Visual Arts Fellow for AVR7 (July 2023). Click here to see Amalia’s program.
Amalia Vekri is a Greek artist based in Athens. Parallel to her own artistic practice she has initiated curatorial and publishing projects. She is also the programming director of Haus N Athen, since its foundation in 2018. Her practice looks into the journeys of her female subjects, very often inspired by the lives of her own ancestors; how these experiences relate to history, myth and pop culture. Her work is also touching on perceptions around the fragility of the body, the passing of time, sexuality and fear. Very often she is using elements or characters from the horror genre reflecting on otherness and gender. The women in Amalia Vekri’ s work try to rise above their perishable and definite nature, and through rituals or magic potions, to possess super natural powers. Shifting in between states, they endure physical and spiritual trials in order to transform into beings without clear boundaries or gender. They command their existence, expanding it or they defy natural laws and flirt with the timeless. Fluid and vegetal shapes create environments that seem to melt or penetrate each other. Echoing these shapes, the female figures in the paintings seem to be flowing and fleeting through elastic dancing poses; like beautiful phoenixes, they fly around, being reborn over and over through time. The more current series of her paintings are made in white, silver/grey tones with strokes of iridescent colour, trying to catch the ethereal delicacy and charm of these darker characters. Lighter colours are used to depict vampire creatures, blurring the limits of stereotypical portrayals. Eyes are watching and the time is midnight, although it seems like daylight and someone is hiding behind the dazzling layers.
Amalia Vekri lives & works in Athens. She graduated from Central Saint Martins – UAL, in London. In 2021 she was awarded by ARTWORKS and was a Fellow at the SNF Artist Fellowship Program (SNF Fellow 2021). Selected recent exhibitions include: After Dark (solo), the Breeder Gallery, Athens (2023), Midnight Daughter (solo), 1100 Broadway Studios, New York (2022), Narrative Framings, Callirrhoë, Athens (2022); T0 A New Era, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg (2022); Performative Transcending Somatic Dinner, supported by NEON Foundation, Athens (2021), Prizing Eccentric Talents, P.E.T Projects, Athens (2021), Sisterhood Streaming Voices Unifying Energies, Korai space, Nicosia (2021), My Perversion is the Belief in Art, Pori Art Museum, Pori (2020-21), Avalon of the Heart (two person), P.E.T Projects, Athens (2020), The Same River Twice, co-organized by DESTE Foundation & the New Museum New York, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019), On the Risings and Settings of the Stars (solo), Aetopoulos, Athens (2019), Curved Arrows, Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna (2019), The Breath that Leaves me, Stay Inside, Aarhus Art Weekend, Aarhus (2019) Cosmology, City Surfer Office, Prague (2019)
