Markia Liapi
- Country
- Greece
I am an Art Historian, specializing in textile art and textiles, a PhD student, specializing in feminist studies (PhD thesis: “Representantions of women’s time in contemporary female poetry: the Greek paradigm” and a drama teacher. While I was working on my studies (MSc in Comparative Literature, MSc in Art History, MSc in Drama Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) I persue my artistic work and expression, through scenography, printing lessons, photograply lessons and artistic residencies (2015, Awarded Second Prize in the Photography exhibition, “Climat!Changez L’ air.” Paris, Sorbonne). 2023, Phototrouve Magazine Online Artistic Residency). My artistic work has to do with embroidery art, collage, engravings and prints. I am interested in exploring the way poetry and art works are combined, especially poetry exploring women’s culture and feminist issues. My latest work explores the way objects appear in contemporary women’s poetry in Greece and how I elaborate them as printings and embroidery works. I was awarded the New Professional Award at the 2024 Textile Society of America Symposium.
I was exploring the medium of embroidery and weaving from a young age, through my link with my mother. During my studies I explored also the medium of photography, engravings and printing. I was drawn to embroidery, textile collage and printing due to my constant interest in tactile aspects of arts. I was also interested in the anonymous work of crafters, especially women, of the past, trying to discuss in my work the distinction between fine arts and crafts and to find answers for this division.
Artworks
The piece "After Andeeva" is inspired by the work and techniques of artist Anna Andreeva. Its is made using vegetables, ink print colour and paper, trying to incorporate the tactility of plants on a two-dimensional work. Following Andreeva's method of printing using the forms of vegetables, I try also to depict a kitchen culture, where the world, usually of women, emerges into a piece of art.
"The Angel of the House" is inspired by the renowned poem by Coventry Patmore «Τhe Angel in the House» which inspires John Ruskin and influences his critical work, especially his lecture "Of Queen's Gardens," which promotes the ideal of Victorian femininity: passivity, domesticity, and privacy. Parallel to that, Virginia Woolf in her also renowned feminist essay "A room of one's own", instists on "killing the Angel of the House", meaning the passivity that the Victorian society demanded from housewives. I elaborate on this tradition creating a frottage, a multi-layered collage about the figure of the angel-housewife, rendering her a female "Angelus Novus", who wanders and flies above and over women's time.
"First time" describes one of my first attempts to work on the medium of linoleum, trying to depict the world of Monet's landscapes. By using linoleum and printing methods, I am trying to discuss the division of fine arts and crafts, while at the same time I explore how the differance of medium, like here the linoleum, can render a bright, impressionist painting, like the "Water Lilly pond and Japanese Bridge" into a dark, contemplative work.