Viki Georgiopoulou
painter
My artworks are characterized basically as realistic. However, I like to refute realism using flat surfaces with certain patterns. It seems that these patterns annul and at the same time support one another. The theme in my artworks plays the foremost and last role in them. I focus my strengths on the narrative and most specifically on the subject narrated. This does not mean that I neglect my designing and my form moulding. I like to talk through images. Images that tell stories; images that scare; images that shock; puzzling images; thought-provoking images. Sometimes they have to do with the children’s soul; sometimes with the wear that time brings in the old age and other times with oppression and entrapment in the workplace.
In my first solo exhibition, I reversed reality via a special pop-realistic style, extreme and contradictory incidents everyday life of the elderly. Among my themes: an elderly woman who plays with her dolls; another one with “a walker” dragging a urinary catheter behind her and another one with a younger woman drinking pills from a huge feeding bottle. In perhaps the most typical work of my collection: my over aged grandmother is depicted in front of the Houses of the Greek Parliament as a skater; in that way it seems as if she is returning to a time of innocence and insouciance beyond the standard limits and conventions attached with the wear and the agony of death. In an amusing and sensitive reversal, the decrepit woman is playing lively, mocking, in this way, old age and death.
In a similar reversal, girls – heroines of fairy tales overturn conventional roles: they stare decisively through their tale; they are children, but they look more like adults and seem to know more than us. Juggling between the innocence of the fairy tale and the threat of reality, they call us to unravel their destiny and solve their own puzzle. Although they constitute figures which are dreamy, transcendental, unreal with icy cold colours highlighting their absence, deep inside they are little girls who embody our innocent defenseless self, which is at risk of exploitation, abuse, natural disaster.
In my purely autobiographical exhibition “A position in civil service”, I express taunt with bitter and almost surreal humour, casting off in this way what scares me, the entrapment by the system and the endless bureaucracy which eliminates, cancels everyone’s personality trampling their ego, transforming them into a machine of null. And in the end it shapes-transforms them into a spineless creature sucking any trace of life from them. Prisoners of their own office, as if they were an integral part of it, public servants either at their young age dream of certain dreams, or at an older age dream of dreams which are stolen by something bigger and stronger they cannot fight; sometimes they break down on the document they draft and sign and other times with a cage on their heads trapping their brain and dissolving their thoughts with their hands tied up, they seem to have accepted their fate.
The faces found in the crates are colleagues, friends, students and relatives of mine. This intimacy of mine is essential. This indirect or direct self biography and the recording of familiar objects and persons are the cocoon of my creativity.
Finally, my favorite rabbit that appears in many of my paintings, sometimes leading and other times playing secondary role, functions as incantation-exorcising evil, guilt and loneliness, expressing in this way the childlike innocence hidden inside me.
In the solo painting exhibition Fragile, the concept of fragility becomes the central axis of a visual narrative about contemporary man. The works explore the delicate balance between personal experience and the social and political conditions that shape it. In a world that seems increasingly dystopian, human existence is revealed as exposed, vulnerable, and often profoundly lonely.
The figures appearing in the paintings bear the marks of their time. War, violence, hunger, and forced migration act as invisible forces that penetrate their bodies and their stories. Children and the elderly—the most vulnerable age groups—appear trapped between the need for protection and the indifference of a world moving with speed and cruelty.
A special place is occupied by the relationship between children and virtual reality: video games, mobile phones, and digital screens create a parallel universe where the experience of life is transformed into image and data. At the same time, the constant surveillance of our lives highlights a new form of control, where privacy becomes a fragile concept.
The works also bring to the surface issues of violence against women, child exploitation, and social inequality. The figures often seem to exist in marginal situations, trapped between innocence and loss, between silence and a scream.
Simultaneously, the exhibition comments on the political and economic reality of the era: ruthless speculators, politicians, and their pre-election promises appear as symbols of a power that promises protection but often generates new forms of fragility.
Fragile is not merely a record of problems. It is an attempt to capture the thin line between endurance and breakage. Through painting, fragility is transformed into a visible experience, reminding us that behind great social and political events, there are always human lives—fragile, yet deeply human.
Viki Georgiopoulou
Viki Georgiopoulou does not care for embellishments. She confronts us with her raw truth, utilizing a style of extreme realism. Her painting seems to emerge from a dystopian news bulletin: war, juvenile violence, female abuse, virtual reality games, psychological trauma, decadence, and disasters. Her reality is terrifying, and the future she describes is dangerous and uncertain. An implacable realism is her stance toward the present—a realism placed upon her canvases not to be easily digested, but to provoke reflection. Through her symbolism, her use of “exaggeration,” and the way she organizes her compositions, she aims to make the viewer react to what they see. Essentially, it is a “sense of existence” that captures the gloom of the modern era and often maps the territory of the unconscious.
Children-as-“adults” are the protagonists in her paintings, where black humor is pervasive. Having worked for years in primary education, Viki Georgiopoulou experiences firsthand the deadlocks children face today and the problems that plague them, stemming from life within a wrongly structured society that stifles them and leads them down the wrong paths. For her, they are a school—a book without an end. Their loneliness in a world of disturbed adults is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her.
The work “The Inauguration,” depicting the ruins left behind by war, is one of the most significant pieces in this series and is particularly timely. Throughout history, artists have frequently used art as a driving force and a tool of resistance against the horrors of war. I cite a few well-known examples: Marc Chagall’s “War,” Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808,” Otto Dix’s print “Shock Troops Advance Under Gas,” and, of course, Pablo Picasso’s famous “Guernica.” Georgiopoulou’s work also contains a clear anti-war message, which emerges through an ironic comment: a child “inaugurates” the destruction. What kind of children is today’s society breeding, the painter asks us, and what kind of world are we handing over to them? The same applies to her work “Dream into Nightmare,” where a child searches for colors amidst the darkness of war.
For Viki Georgiopoulou, another scourge of the era is technology. To her, it is nothing less than a modern-day Pandora’s box. Just as curiosity led Pandora to open the jar, releasing physical and emotional curses, so too is the curiosity of the girl in the painter’s eponymous work—who wants to explore everything on her mobile phone—the source of modern problems. The phone becomes a gift that, while appearing precious, is actually a curse. It makes children antisocial, opening a purely fictional world before them filled with useless information, often preventing them from enjoying their youth.
Very significant works in the same series are “Social Construction, Girl” and “Social Construction, Boy.” In 1966, sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote The Social Construction of Reality, one of the most important sociology books of the 20th century. Its central idea is that individuals and groups, over time, create social representations of the world and themselves. These, in turn, are assimilated and repeated as roles, becoming institutionalized and embedded in society as “natural” (!). Knowledge and perceptions of reality are, in other words, socially constructed. Thus, we have pink for the girl, who remains mute since she is given no choice to decide what she truly likes, and light blue for the boy, who for the same reason is deprived of his sight. In this way, the painter intends to make the viewer reflect on the role of a society that does not allow children the freedom to simply be themselves, but instead imposes a manufactured reality that does not concern them.
Another contemporary issue Georgiopoulou addresses is the refugee crisis. She depicts a female refugee with her child in her arms like a Madonna with the Divine Infant, struggling amidst the waves. This is a popular theme in art, common in both Orthodox and Western Christian traditions. In this manner, the refugee and her child are transformed into modern martyrs, highlighting the tragedy of their situation.
Finally, with the work “Staycation,” the painter speaks of the absolute decadence of modern society. The construction of a fake happiness has been the panacea for many generations, leading the world to its current state through the creation of artificial paradises that have no connection to reality.
As a whole, Viki Georgiopoulou’s works have an ominous and inhumane character. This theme has become increasingly popular among artists since the late 1990s. Globalization, the commodification of natural resources and human life, the economic crisis, and ecological destruction have all contributed to this phenomenon, which we see expanded in 21st-century art. The artist also takes dystopia as her subject—not because she is drawn to a prevailing aesthetic or trend, but because she feels a deep horror for the modern age. Her dystopia refers to a world that could very well exist, giving her art the character of a warning.
Yet, in her paintings, there is also hope. When she paints “The King,” showing a beautiful boy with long hair among the reeds, she argues that this is the true paradise for a child: Nature. Perhaps, then, a return to nature is ultimately the solution to all the problems of modern society? Of course, the eye of Big Brother is watching…
Ira Papapostolou Art Critic & Historian, Member of AICA International
