Kyriazi Pelagia ()

Born in Athens, she studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Y Moralis and D Kokkinidis as well as pottery (1972-1977). In 1992 she went to New York on a Fulbright scholarship and continued her studies with Peter Campus at the Dept of Digital Photography of New York University and the Printmaking Dept of the School of Visual Arts (1992-1993), at the same time collaborating with Vassilis Lambrinos.
Her first solo exhibition was hosted at the Ora Cultural Centre in 1981. In 1989 she exhibited large-scale oils and charcoal drawings at the Ileana Tounta Gallery. Her early painting is dominated by an expressionistic idiom with the emphasis on the expressive powers of colour. Next, her stay in New York and her interest in digital media lead to works that combine the use of digital photography with video, music and poetry in the works Sleeping (1997), Final Sojourn (1999) and Tyranny of Light (2002), which she presented in solo exhibitions in Athens and New York. In the mid-2000s she goes back to painting and printmaking. In 2009, on the occasion of her solo exhibition at the bookshop of MIET she issues a limited, handmade edition of the art book VIA. In 2013 the Bank of Greece Cultural Institution (MIET; Eynardou Hall) hosts The Dream and the Familiar, a retrospective of her works for the 1990-2013 period. In her more recent series An Image, an Eidolon (2017; Ekfrassi Art Gallery – Yanna Grammatopoulou) the main axis is drawing in its various guises: drawings with white chalk on black paper, mixed-media works with Indian ink, charcoal and acrylic paint, and silkscreen on industrial glasspaper generate a reflective mood through an interplay of positive/negative.
Her prints have been awarded twice in competitions of the New York-based International Printmaking Centre and exhibited in the exhibitions New Prints 2002 and New Prints 2009/Winter in New York and Chicago, respectively.
She has presented her work in solo exhibitions in Athens and New York and has participated in dozens of group and international exhibitions in Greece, Europe and the USA. She has also published texts on art and has lectured in the context of art shows and cultural events. Her works can be found in the Ministry of Culture, the Bank of Greece Cultural Institution, the Frissiras Museum, the American College, the Municipal Gallery of Rhodes and in private collections.