Iliodora Margellos inaugurates, on the 9th of March, her new exhibition 'Untitled' at the a.antonopoulou.art gallery. Paolo Colombo has written: The works of Iliodora Margellos are composed of a visible structure and a woven surface. They are three-dimensional. They present negative and positive space, and are eminently colorful. Formally, they suggest a system of communicating, an intricate and organic path for interior musings, a colorful explosion of threads and wires.

They are made of disparate materials that carry associations of domestic space and the needs of a household, for instance yarn, fabric, shoelaces. They show tension and tautness and, with their elemental qualities, a beautiful formal cohesion. They also suggest diverse, complex, and articulate readings connected to literature and art history.

In random order:
In the Odyssey, the act of weaving is fundamental to the narrative. It is descriptive of a woman’s domain; of household activities; of the potential for manipulation through art making—that is, the construction of layers of meaning through the creative act.

The significance of the artistic value of weaving is also exemplified by the myth of Arachne, whose father, incidentally, was a dyer—hence the immediate connection to the bright colors in Margellos’s sculptures.

These woven works can also be linked to post-conceptual art, as in the case of the bodily elements popular in the imagery of late twentieth-century artists, and to the reestablishment of decorative arts as a popular genre directed toward a large and anonymous public.

Through these sculptures, Margellos revisits, perhaps with a certain irony, minimalist artistic practices using techniques typically ascribed to the feminine sphere. In this way her work broaches subject matter expressed in what has become a canonical text of feminist criticism: “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power” by Anna Chave.

But most of all the works tell a story of a person. They speak of an intimate relationship with art, of a personal, hands-on engagement with the transformation of materials.

In my eyes, Margellos’s practice is inspired by a teeming interior life. There is a one-to-one quality in her work that makes the viewer feel the artist’s presence in every step of her creation, in every thread she chooses—as one would say: “in every grain of sand.”

The artist’s focus seems to be an experiential and inside-out depiction of the body. Upon deeper scrutiny, it feels like a metaphor for a composite, layered psychology: a way to outline an emotional process and the interior vibration of the human spirit.

In looking at the works, I recognize the person who has assembled them: one who subsists as a whole, with the certainties, the contradictions, and the emotional baggage that makes up an individual. In brief, they are traces of a soul.

The sculptures resonated the moment I saw them. They present a series of aesthetic criteria that are articulate and complete: security of expression, complexity, and the vigorous embrace of bold forms.

They have a visual affirmativeness, and the ability to convey the multiplicities and layerings of human experience.