NEFELI PAPADIMOULI

With a background in architecture and the visual arts, Nefeli Papadimouli works across media, from participatory actions in public space to sculpture, photography, drawing, costume design, moving image, installation and performance. Inspired by phenomenology, feminism and contemporary political theory, her proto-architectural approach explores spatial configurations of distance as essential elements in processes of social conflict, negotiation and equilibrium.

Informed by utopian architectural and artistic avant-gardes as much as contemporary dance, her series of modular, connective, elastic sculptures function at once as prompts for collective movement and architectures of assembly, investigating the interdependence of cultural and natural forms and exploring the notion of space through its relationship to the body. Conceived as spaces of encounter, her radically inclusive works manifest a desire to engage the bodies of performers and spectators, humans and non-humans, in gestures and reciprocal movements, in settings ranging from museum spaces to urban and natural environments. Like a second skin, her costumes both produce and dissolve the boundaries of the body, individual and collective, in a playful and emancipatory shift of perspective. Her works and performances thus stimulate behavioural patterns and collective processes to create affirmative grounds for the emergence of a critical spatial and bodily practice that destabilises preconceived notions of identity and alterity. Her drawings, photographs and videos similarly inhabit the space between performance, document, trace and graphic notation. The artist's continued engagement with relational patterns and collective movement places Papadimouli’s practice in direct relation to abstraction as an artistic and political language while her playful blurring of boundaries between sculpture, drawing, photography, live forms and durational media associates her with the historical avant-gardes. 

Nefeli Papadimouli (b. Athens, 1988) lives between Paris and Athens.

Upon graduating from the School of Architecture of the National Polytechnical University of Athens, followed by an MFA at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts de Paris, Papadimouli was the recipient of the Artworks Fellowship from Stavros Niarchos Foundation (Greece, 2018) and the Prix Dauphine pour l’Art contemporain (France, 2019). Her recent solo exhibitions include Étoiles partielles, cur. Claire LeRestif, Le Crédac, Ivry sur Seine (France, 2023); Relational Cartographies, cur. Keren Detton & Janny Devrient, Ter Posterie, Rosealare (Belgium, 2022) and Build the World of the You - ACTE, Le Concept, École d’Art du Calasisis, Calais (France, 2021). She has participated in institutional group exhibitions such as La Nuit venue, on y verra plus claire, cur. Anna Milone, Centre Culturel Jean Cocteau, Les Lilas (France, 2024); Etre Forêts, Fondation MABA, Nogent-sur-Marne (France, 2024); Entre là, Casa Conti - Fondation Ange Leccia, Corsica, (France, 2023); Douze preuves d’amour, Révélations Emerige 2022, cur. Gaël Charbau, Paris (France, 2022); Transmeare, cur. Ida Soulard & Ulla von Brandenburg, FRAC Picardie, Amiens (France, 2022); Playground Festival, M Museum Leuven, (Belgium, 2021);  Archipel - quatres residences, mille experiences, cur. Keren Detton, FRAC Grand Large, Dunkerque (France, 2021); Still Here Tomorrow, cur. Dimitra Nikolou & Panos Giannikopoulos, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens (Greece, 2019);  MFW – Collection Croisière 2019 – Nouvelle Collection Paris, cur. Sarah Nefissa Belhadjali, La Panacée, Montpellier (France, 2018); Imaginary homes, 6th Biennale of Contemporary Art, cur. Syrago Tsiara, MOMUS Museum, Thessaloniki, (Greece, 2015); CAUTION! SLIPPERY GROUND,  cur. Yelta Köm,  Istanbul Modern, Istanbul (Turkey, 2015). Nefeli Papadimouli was an artist in residence at Villa Belleville (2018), Ravi-Liège (2019), Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2020-2021) and Frac Grand Large (2021-2022). In 2022, she was the recipient of the Prix Matsutani, and in 2023, the Prix Pierre Cardin of the Académie des Beaux Arts for sculpture.