LIA KAZAKOU

The source of inspiration is Lia Kazakou’s mother, who worked as a tailor. The artist describes how she was fascinated by the skill with which her mother created female bodies out of fabrics. She aims to capture this magic in her painting.

Kazakou’s oil paintings focus on the materiality of precious fabrics: the finest details of the embroidery, silk, brocade, and lace of—in some cases historical—garments are reproduced with a meticulousness that give the impression you could feel with your eyes. The detail shown is selected in a fascinating way, showing only fragments of the human body, of the wearer of these elaborate clothes, never the whole body and rarely faces. They are snippets, such as the back of a head or even just a woman’s neck, which additionally add a seductive note that is underlined by the delicate textures.

The background and the fabrics’ folds are mostly captured in dark, shadowy colours so that a nostalgic impression is also conveyed, as if these were oil paintings from a historical period, but without having the character of a representative image.

Courtesy Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art