"Victoria G. Karelia" Greek Costume Collection-Remembering the Future: Uncutting Cords

Visual artist Maria Olga Vlachou presents her first solo exhibition at the "Victoria G. Karelia" Greek Costume Collection in Kalamata from February 25th to April 13th, 2025.

Through fourteen large-scale works and a video, Maria Olga translates into digital images, "embroidered" by hand, the woven, embroidered and knitted fabrics that have been lost or hidden in chests. Listening to the breaths of women who, in earlier times and different circumstances, transformed their experience into art, she transforms each stitch into a pixel and brings the important yesterday to the hopeful tomorrow.

The Stilomantila of Karpathos, a traditional bridal shirt from Menidi, Attica, wall embroideries from the Ionian islands, the embroidery motifs of the festive costume of Almyros, Magnesia are inspirations for Maria Olga Vlachou, as are love as an eternal bond, intimacy, romance in the modern era, communication through emojis. The artist invites the audience to connect with tradition's living and uninterrupted pulse, highlighting the inextricable relationship that unites the past with the eternal present.