Iliodora Margellos b. 1985

Iliodora Margellos has a multidisciplinary body of work that involves drawing, painting, sculpture, site-specific installations, embroidery and performance. Over the years, she has developed a kaleidoscopic visual universe where we encounter delicate expressive gestures materialized through meshes, fabrics, threads, drawings on paper, beads and other materials.

Consciously occupying the fluid space between abstraction and representation, Margellos examines questions that deal with loneliness, anger, restlessness, resilience and human interaction. Since 2016, her artistic research has led her to embroidery as a way of personal expression, using needle and thread as a different kind of drawing that is related to patience, the passing of time and self-healing. Despite their attentive and meticulous making process, Margellos’ works come across as calm, fresh and effortless, allowing their rich colors and textures to create spontaneous emotions that are conveyed with honesty and restraint. Her works often evoke natural landscapes and quasi-pagan settings, acting as a metaphor for human psychological states and alluding to an understanding of the human body through its bare, unmediated interaction with nature.

The beauty and dexterity inherent in every work by Margellos truly reveals itself on close inspection. The smaller scale of the works and the detail which she has chosen to work with require the viewer to look closely and observe how perfectly executed every detail is. It is fascinating how a few well-placed stitches and a pair of beads transform into a miniature plant or a sunset smaller than your thumb. Her recent embroideries are like micro-sculptures placed on the surface of the work, together composing landscapes full of emotion and subtle poetry.

Iliodora Margellos was born in Minneapolis, USA in 1985. She graduated from Yale University in 2006 with a BA in Art, and later on she worked at the studio of Peter Halley in Chelsea, New York, until 2007. She expanded her artistic practice with studies in drawing at the Salzburg Academy of Fine Arts in Austria. Her work has been exhibited in art spaces and international art fairs like the Parnassos Literary Society in Athens, the Museum of Greek Modern Culture, Untitled Miami Beach, Baert Gallery in Los Angeles, Dio Horia Gallery in Mykonos, Remap 4 in Athens, Casa Internazionale delle Donne in Rome and Louise Bourgeois’ Sunday Salons in New York.

The artist lives and works in Athens, Greece.