Ioanna Sakellaraki is a Greek visual artist and researcher. Her work investigates the relationship between collective cultural memory and fiction. Drawing emphasis on the photographic object, process and encounter, she explores the boundaries of a primitive, yet futuristic vision of places and people.
"Nine Years on the Lizard Reef", part II of my trilogy will be for the first time exhibited during @emopberlin alongside a selection of mixed media and photographic artworks from part I "The Seven Circuits of a Pearl". I will be sharing more details about the exhibition opening in March very soon 🦎
In "Nine Years on the Lizard Reef", I dismantle a family lie which leads me to the discovery of my half- brother, by my father and his ex-wife, whom I have never met. Diving deep inside the oceans of the forever unknown and continuously reformed in my family history and creative practice, I traverse the faraway coral islands of the Australian Great Barrier Reef, where I work on-site with my father’s reptile skin collection and stories of deception and camouflage of marine wildlife in this other part of the world.
Drawing from the carnival disguise photographs of my half-brother as seen in the part of the archive covering his nine- year letter exchange with my father, this second part paints the family mask we all hide behind when sharing a secret. Just like the process of ecdysis deriving from Ancient Greek (ἐκδύω (ekduo) `to take off, strip off`), allows damaged tissue and missing limbs to be regenerated or substantially re-formed in reptiles, this part is all about stripping off the old cuticle and growing out of the insecurity the fragment imposes by guiding its damaged species to a new stage of growth.
#emop #skins #lizards #ninetearsonthelizardreef #talesofsealustanddeath #ioannasakellaraki #wilderness #reptile #ostrich #berlinart #trilogy #europeanmonthofphotography #mystery #analogue #exhibition #photoexhibition #sea #death #embalm #zoology #greatbarrierreef #naturephotography #archives #practiceasresearch #specimen #Snakes #wilderness #mystery #contemporaryart #contemporarywomenartists #familymonster
I am looking forward to travelling to Milano for my participation in this amazing panel discussion as one of the exhibiting artists for this year’s edition "Tree of Life: A Love Letter to Nature" in the company of beautiful image makers from around the world. Look forward to speaking our magic 🪄See you @base_milano between 6-9 March!
Featured Image from my series `The Mark of a Terrible Sun`, Papua New Guinea, 2023
#REPOST @photovogue - A glimpse of what’s to come at the next edition of the PhotoVogue Festival, “The Tree of Life: A Love Letter to Nature,” taking place at @base_milano from March 6th to 9th, 2025. This year’s program will feature various panels exploring the festival’s central theme as well as the enduring values at the heart of PhotoVogue.
The panel “Surreal Realities: A Magical Approach to Documentary Photography” will showcase the work of artists Alessandro Bo (@killbo), Igor Furtado (@furtadigor) & Labo Young (@laboyoung), Lisandro Suriel (@lisandrosuriel), Ioanna Sakellaraki (@ioannasakellaraki_photography_), Aletheia Casey (@aletheiacasey), Gui Christ (@guichrist) and Dolores Medel (lolamedel). From dreamlike imagery to layered metaphors, their work challenges traditional documentary norms, offering imaginative perspectives on universal themes. This panel invites audiences to consider how the blending of reality and fantasy can create powerful and transformative visual narratives.
Moderated by Elisa Medde (@elsmdd), an esteemed photography editor, curator, and writer, this panel delves into the intersection of documentary photography and surrealism. Medde, whose career spans celebrated roles as Editor-in-Chief of Foam Magazine and curator for major photography awards and festivals, brings her deep understanding of visual storytelling to this exploration of magical realism in contemporary photography.
Stay tuned for more details!
#photovogue #themarkofaterriblesun #ecology #Nature #photoproject #ioannasakellaraki #photofestival #vogue #artphotography #contemporaryart #fineart #artfestival #surrealimages #naturephotography #creatives #experimentalart #Vogue #melanesia
But to this silence precisely, this vigorous force, by which the writer, having been deprived of himself, has in this effacement nevertheless maintained the authority of a certain power: The power decisively to be still, so that in this silence what speaks without beginning or end might take on form, coherence, and sense. (Blanchot, The Space of Literature/ The Essential Solitude)
ABD (All But Dissertation) Final phase of my practice-led PhD: "Archiving the Disaster: Preservation, Separation and Encounter", utilizing the Blanchotian disaster as the critical and navigational framework for my making.
#phd #criticalthinking #strangerthanfiction #booooooom #disaster #archive #blanchot #landscapephotography #practice #practiceasresearch #Australia #outback #phdjourney #ioannasakellaraki #analogphotography #filmnegatives #memory #desert #contemporaryart #fantasy #loss #mystery #academia #artist #womenphotographers #theoryandpractice #scifi #darkness
My sojourn in this part of the world has passed with a swiftness and quietude I have come to cherish deeply. When I first ventured into this country in 2017, I had just quit my office job, a year after my father`s passing, embarking on a quest to create a new body of work entitled Aidos.
Part of my project statement then pondered, ‘What makes us escape our own country and how do we live based on values we once learnt and always questioned?’ A work developed as an exploration of home and identity from afar, it situated me in the liminal space between places and memories. As I`ve embarked on creating my new work, The Seven Circuits of a Pearl, I traversed these familiar landscapes once more, armed with the same Zenza Bronica, finding resonance and rediscovery in each frame.
The significance of this journey for my grieving and healing processes only dawned on me gradually, in retrospect. I recall vividly the first time I crossed the New South Wales outback, seated alone on a bus on my way to the mining town of Cobar, and that sense of longing to return has never quite left me. When people ask, I say this land reminds me of a place I have never truly seen but have always imagined.
Somehow, I find myself here once more, yearning to stay much longer. As I tread the red earth, far from home, I occasionally muse on the Aegean. Perhaps, in a sense, this place is indeed a mirage! I feel blessed to be here🖤
Images: The Seven Circuits of a Pearl, 2023
Aidos, 2017
See more from both series on my site via Link in Bio
#outback #landscapephotography
#analogphotography
#ioannasakellaraki #thesevencircuitsofapearl #wilderness #adventure #outbackaustralia #homeland #dream #mirage #filmisnotdead #death #Nature #contemporarywomenartists #desert #zenzabronica #kodakportra #contemporaryart #filmphotography #reddirt #mystery #darknature #horses #australia #artphotography #mourning
