BIOGRAPHY
Maria Maragoudaki is a Greek Artist. She studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. At the same time, she attended classes in Scenography, Byzantine icon technique and Fresco. With a state scholarship, she attended classes at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.
She obtained a Postgraduate Degree in Byzantine Archaeology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
She has held five solo exhibitions in Greece in the capital city of Athens and Crete. She has taken part in multiple group exhibitions and large scale international Foires. The artist herself considers that the most important of her last participations in a group exhibition was in “Theorems”, an institution that is not commercial in nature, but Art Historians, members of AICA Hellas* select artists of the contemporary Greek scene, whose work introduces proposals that may provide stimuli for future artists.
*AICA Hellas is a member of the International Association of Art Critics AICA.
CV
STATEMENT
Painting in my life has been a gift that I did not ask for, but also an inner obligation, along with an imperative need to create. When I am not painting, I feel that I am wasting the time that was given to me to live. I feel like I am stealing from life.
When I start to work on a new blank canvas and stand before my subject, it’s as if I am seeing the world for the first time again and I have to discover it from the very beginning. Always having the same anxiety as if it was the first time.
For the Art in this series, to convey my thoughts, I draw inspiration from Japanese anime and the classic fairy tales from my childhood.
It is known that anime was designed by Japanese artists with a masculine perspective, for their personal pleasure. But when these figures entered video games, it was as if they gained autonomy, and became independent. They kept their special characteristics, such as ears and tails, but also their erotic and cute elements. At the same time, they acquired special sweeping powers capable of destroying evil. Thus, in my works, I present the modern woman as an anime, with her eroticism, dynamism and autonomy. The modern woman who is not afraid to be herself, nor to change her image for anyone.
Fairy tales, on the other hand, present and prepare the girl-woman for her social position, the fate she must accept, submission, silence and the only option she is allowed are the hopes and dreams for her salvation, by a prince. I use these heroines of fairy tales, to rebel and shake off the stereotypes and roles that were worn on them like a costume, feeling it as their own. I present them liberated, ready to accept their nature and shout “enough is enough”.
Mary Maragkoudaki
