The winners of the 2024 G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation Art Prize are Irini Miga, Katerina Nakou, and Stratis Tavlaridis.
This year, the prize welcomed applications from international artists, awarding three equal prizes to the proposals which stood out for their originality, creativity, site-specificity, and connection with the theme of Care. The selected artworks will be presented to the public this summer in Crete, where they will remain on permanent display in Agios Nikolaos, and become part of the Foundation’s art collection, which comprises more than 70 artworks by renowned Greek and international artists.
This year’s winners:
Irini Miga, for her proposal Landscape in Motion, a site-responsive artwork which combines painterly and sculptural elements, portraying an ever-evolving landscape. Inspired by the twirling motion of a leaf in the air, it brings attention to the endangered and rare flora of Crete, encouraging a collective awareness for their preservation.
Irini Miga studied art at London’s Central Saint Martins College, obtained a BFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts, and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, design, writing, and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include Reflections, Atlanta Contemporary Museum; Away is Another Way of Saying Here, Essex Flowers Gallery, NY; An Interval, Flyweight Projects, NY; and group shows such as Fountainhead Biennial II: Last Days of a House, Curated by Omar López Chahoud, Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, among others. She has participated in internationally acclaimed Art Residency Programs and her work is held in international art collections.
Katerina Nakou, for her proposal The Resilient Thread, comprised of large-scale compositions woven on the loom. The work re-introduces the decorative artform known as ‘passementerie’. The composition will highlight a traditionally decorative element by making it the centre of attention, both visually and conceptually, shifting our focus to the details, diversity, and value of unseen forces, and our attention to aspects of the world which are often overlooked. Katerina Nakou has studied Philosophy and History of Art at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen and Textile Design at Reutlingen University (Germany), where she also pursued an MA in Design & Fine Art Conception. She specialized as a Textile Developer in Jacquard weaving at the Textiel Museum – Textiel Lab (Netherlands). She has been awarded the Grand Prize at IDEEC 2023 (International Design Education Expo and Conference) in Chuncheon (Korea), and her works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and institutes in Germany and Korea. She has received scholarships for art and design programs at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2023) and at the University of Girona (2024), and has been a resident fellow at TekstilLab, Bergen – Norway (2023), and at the European Textile Network & Textile Centre Haslach – Austria (2024).
Stratis Tavlaridis, for his proposal Long Waves, a large-scale installation of hand-made paper, which reminds viewers of the sea’s movement and at the same time brings to mind images of fishing nets. The artist aims to awaken the public to the imperative importance of caring for the seas, bringing us face to face with something we often forget about or ignore. We are an integral part of the destructive course that is happening now, and we are given the opportunity to reverse it.
Stratis Tavlaridis is a graduate of the School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Using the papercut technique, he creates perforated paper installations. He has held solo exhibitions in Athens and Thessaloniki, and he represented Greece at the “Izmir Mediterranean Biennal” in 2023 and the “15th Biennale de la Mediterranée” in 2011. He has participated in the following art fairs: “Tom of Finland Art & Culture Fail” (2023), “Rome International Art Fair” (2021), “London Art Fair” (2015), “Art Athina” (2014). He has participated in group exhibitions in England, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, and Greece and has been awarded in Greek and European competitions.
Previous Art Prize winners include Theodoros Zafeiropoulos and Yiorgos Rimenidis for Come with the Wind (2019), Ismene King and Ileana Arnaoutou for Tender shell geophilia (2022), Maro Fasouli for Nomadic Murals (2023), Alexandros Laios for Day (2023), and Ami Yamasaki for Whispers travel and whisper to you again (2023).
Art Prize Selection Committee 2024: Sotirios Bahtsetzis – G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation Artistic Director, Art Historian & Curator, Ass. Professor at the Department of Culture, Creative Media & Industries, University of Thessaly
George Gyparakis – Visual Artist, Professor at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens
Polina Kosmadaki – Art Historian, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Benaki Museum
Nikos Navridis – Visual Artist, Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts
Alexandros Psychoulis – Visual Artist, Professor at the Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Thessaly
Applications for the Art Prize open every Fall.
