Onassis Stegi presents “A Female Figure in Red and Purple Costume” at Neos Kosmos

The work “A Female Figure in Red and Purple Costume” depicts a stylized female figure in an ancient Cretan olive grove. The woman raises her arms to the Attic sky, as if attempting to embrace the clouds and play with their shadows. Alluding to the female deities with raised arms in a gesture of prayer exhibited at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Psyllaki’s urban goddess stands proud and imposing, guarding the neighborhood, dispelling negative energy, and stimulating our imagination. A key theme in her painting is the search for harmony and balance—spiritual as well as mental—in an unbalanced world. She uses acrylics to paint silhouettes and forms of vessels in earthly tones and, influenced by design and decoration, creates images that feel familiar. Once again, culture gets out of Stegi and travels through the city, adds color on its walls, and embraces the urban landscape.

“When I started working on the concept of the vessel, of a vase that can contain material or immaterial goods, I soon realized its (obvious) correlation with human nature as a body that encapsulates feelings, values, and experiences. The female figure covering the wall of the apartment building raises her arms towards the sky and calls in cosmic energy. She receives it within her, through the openings located in the imagined head and hands of her vessel-body, transforms it, and returns it back to earth through the openings in her legs. Her role is balancing, protective, yet strict, with clear boundaries. A Mother who is both a reference point and a grounding force for the disoriented Child of the 21st century.”

- Eleni Psyllaki, artist

Her color palette is infused with balanced earthly tones inspired by her birthplace, Crete. Her forms, on the other hand, are strict, minimal, and rooted in abstraction, where any surplus information or detail is eliminated, permeating the works with a Doric quality. Her paintings and works on paper are populated by various representations of vessels, both historical and imaginary. Despite their descriptive outline, forms are seen as a flat space that can encompass meaning.

Once again, culture gets out of Stegi and travels through the city, goes down to the center of Athens, adds color on its walls, and advocates for the intertemporality of the urban landscape. Athens is our city and we treat it as what it is: a living organism and a space full of stimulating encounters, full of people who transform streets or entire neighborhoods with their work, each of them in their own, unique way—an area that constantly evolves, redefines itself, and seeks answers to timeless questions. And this is why we explore it daily. Every year, through commissions and site-specific artistic interventions in the public space of the Athenian city center, Onassis Stegi seeks after places where art intertwines with daily life. With a series of artworks on building walls, great works of contemporary Greek visual artists are recreated on large scale.

Eleni Psyllaki, artist

Onassis Foundation Project Managers: Maria Vassariotou, Artemis Palaska

Line Production: UrbanAct

Onassis Culture

Director of Culture: Afroditi Panagiotakou

Executive Director: Dimitris Theodoropoulos

Campaign Design: Onassis Media Office

Commissioned & Produced by Onassis Foundation