Chryssafenia Gardiakou

Chryssafenia is a multi-local artist, curator and art historian who spends her time in the U.S., Greece, and Ecuador. She works in 2D, 3D, collage, installation and performance, joining artist collectivas and often collaborating with authors, fashion designers, fiber artists, weavers, farmers, revolutionaries, musicians and dancers.
Her themes include ethnic cross-dressing, alchemy (its tradition of inscrutability as well as its amaranthine transformative potency ), performativity, shamanism, interstice, the disabled body as protest, muse and provocateur, semiotics, hybrid vs mongrel queries, sad girl theory as well as sacred and profane stories, old and new, public and arcane. The Quotidian Mysteries of the 21st century.
Her current work explores magical symbols, hierophanies, and how pain mitigates or intensifies these experiences. Ultimately, exploring and trying to find what inhabits the cusp.
Fashion's function in art informs the work as well; how it navigates, explores and explosively disrupts the status quo. Personal dramaturgy performed via sartorialism as crypto-vernacular is examined in autobiographical modes.
A most rewarding and notable collaboration involved being invited into the role of curator, by Mirto Fifa in t...

Northern Illinois University
B.F.A. in Studio Art
B.A. in Art History
M.A in Art History
S.A.I.C (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Fashion

-Apprenticed under Christo Riganas, Sculptor

-Workshop with Flo Oy Won (studied multi-media collage)

Scholarships:
-Helen Merritt Scholarship
-Dimitris Liakos Scholarship
-Rosebud Foundation- V&PA Endowment
-Art History Instructor at Northern Illinois --University 2011-2014

-AUGUST 2022-
Traveling Vending Machine-Group Show curated by Donovan Tracy a.k.a. Gaitor- (graphic novel artist and author-creator of Erma webcomic/Outcast studios)

-JULY 2019 Women to the Front- Group show curated by esteemed collage artist and activist Bryan Daniel Joseph DADA SOUL FACE

-JUNE 2019 What Is Empathy? Aurora Public Art Commission, curated by Jen Evans

-APRIL 2019 Group Art Show

-MAY 2017
ARTBAR The Delirium Show

-April 2017
ARTBAR The Body Show

-February 2017
ARTBAR The Desire show

-January 2017
ARTBAR The Fable Show

-June 2016
ARTBAR Sin Titulo

-May 2016
ARTBAR The Urban Show

-MAY 2016
SciTech Museum/ on Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of Aurora IL Postal Office

-April 2016
ARTBAR The Dream Show

-March 2016
ARTBAR The Cat Show

-February 2016
ARTBAR- The Red Show

-March 2013-
Exhibiting work at Mausoleum Gallery, Aurora IL

-February 2013-
Group exhibit- "Where's Your Heart?" (curated by Nikki Rice)
Anti-Violence Valentine

-Fall 2012-
"Monsters" Curated by Ramon Soto

-Summer 2011-
Aurora Art Walk (Featured artist)

-Spring 2011-
Group show at Mausoleum Gallery in Aurora Il.

-Fall 2010-
SOLO SHOW: "SARTORIAL MACGYVERISM: Inception, Dramaturgy and Endymatological Apotheosis" at Ba...