Mary-Angela Papalaskari

Artist Statement

My practice moves across drawing, painting, video, experimental photography, comics, conceptual work and community-based projects. Rather than settling on one medium, I let each idea find the form that suits it: some things need the slowness of egg tempera or graphite, others need a camera, a story, or other people in the room.

My influences are wide and shift over time. I draw on older traditions such as icon painting and classical imagery alongside contemporary art, popular forms like comics, and the everyday life and conversations around me. I'm less interested in belonging to one lineage than in what happens when these sources meet.

The thread running through my work is an interest in people: the body, closeness and tension between figures, and how familiar images can be looked at again. Whether I'm reworking a traditional subject or making something collaboratively, I'm drawn to the space between the intimate and the shared.