MARILIA KOLIBIRI
INTERNAL SCENES
Opening reception:
Wednesday 29 April 18.00 – 21.00
Photography: Adrian Escu
Kolibiri’s new body of work centres on the interior as both a physical and psychological space. The paintings depict domestic environments: living rooms, corridors, tables, and staged arrangements, rendered with a heightened sense of color, pattern, and spatial elasticity. Notably, these are never fully private spaces (bedrooms and bathrooms are absent) shifting the focus toward shared, performative interiors rather than intimate retreat.
Rather than functioning as stable settings, these interiors operate as constructed environments in which perception subtly shifts. Perspective bends, architectural elements fold into one another, and objects appear both anchored and slightly displaced. Familiar spaces become charged with an underlying tension: intimate, composed, yet never entirely at rest.
Recurring motifs e.g. bookshelves, candles, textiles, flowers, and furniture create a visual vocabulary that moves across the works. These elements are not symbolic in a fixed sense; instead, they accumulate meaning through repetition and variation. This vocabulary extends beyond the paintings into a series of ceramic works: candles and floral forms that translate these motifs into physical objects, reinforcing the exhibition’s spatial and material logic.
Color plays a central role in structuring these spaces. Warm, saturated tones define zones of attention and emotional intensity, while cooler passages introduce distance or pause. The paintings maintain a delicate balance between decorative richness and compositional control, allowing detail to build without dissolving the overall structure.
At times, the works shift from interior scenes to more contained, almost emblematic compositions: a cat suspended within a dense ornamental field or carpet, a candelabrum framed as if in a mirror, or a table seen from above, fragmented into a grid. These moments compress space and narrative, concentrating the visual language into tighter, more symbolic configurations.
Across the exhibition, the interior emerges not as a private refuge, but as a site of projection and construction. The spaces depicted are less about inhabitation than about how environments are imagined, remembered, and staged. They suggest a continuous negotiation between order and distortion, familiarity and estrangement.
She has held solo exhibitions in Athens, Vienna, and Sofia, including The Coil Path (2025, Ag18 Gallery, Vienna), The Well’s Instinct (2024, Callirrhoë Gallery, Athens), and The Pleasure of Matter (2023, Untitled Gallery, Sofia). Her work has appeared in international group exhibitions in Vienna, Sofia, and New York. Kolibiri has received awards including 1st Prize in the Panhellenic Karcher Competition (2022) and has collaborated with brands and institutions such as Korres (2026) and H&M (2023).
Oil on Canvas
120 x 120 cm
Oil on Canvas
151 x 162 cm
Oil on Canvas
144 × 153 cm
Oil on Canvas
160 × 160 cm
Oil on Canvas
60 × 50 cm
Oil on Canvas
60 × 70 cm
Oil Stick on Paper
12 × A4
87.5 × 84 cm