Untitled
2005
The work is displayed as part of the permanent exhibition
Drawings
Pencil and coloured pencil on paper
25 x 30 cm
Donated by Leonidas Ioannou, 2018
Inv. No. 1225/18
Since the beginning of the 1980s, Christiana Soulou (1961, Athens, Greece) has used drawing as a primordial artistic genre of a timeless resonance and an analytical capacity. Τhis practice has evolved to such degree that the images she creates cannot easily be attached to any specific era, alluding instead to a multiplicity of things: Renaissance studies, illustrations of scientific manuals, and depictions from prominent literary or occult texts. A profound sensuality, rendered through the most slight traces verging on the brink of invisibility, has become her unique stylistic characteristic.
In many of her works, Christiana Soulou activates the capacity of drawing to convey speech and literature, attempting to interpret texts such as those of Virgil, William Shakespeare, and Jorge Luis Borges. In works such as At the house of the mournful man – Amorgos / N. Gatsos and The man during the course of his mysterious life – Amorgos, Soulou engages with verses from Amorgos, the sole poem published by Greek poet and lyricist Nikos Gkatsos in his lifetime, in 1943.
Christiana Solou was born in Athens to an Alexandrian family and spent a large part of her childhood in Egypt. She lives and works in Athens. She studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She has taken part in many exhibitions around the world including: Fürstenberg Zeitgenössisch, Donaueschingen (2018); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2016); Camden Arts Centre, London (2016); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); New Museum, New York (2010); and the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006).