Victoria Miro Projects is delighted to launch Nymphidia, a presentation on Vortic by London-based artist Konstantina Krikzoni. This is the seventh project in an ongoing series of presentations by invited artists on Vortic.

Groups of female figures inhabit Krikzoni’s fluid and painterly underwater scenes, which blend ancient and contemporary approaches to storytelling that are shaped by her upbringing by the Aegean Sea. In her new body of work, Krikzoni disrupts narratives within historical and classical paintings and writings – from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Le Bain Turc to the Greek mythological figures of sirens and harpies – to reconsider the relationship between women and nature.

Themes of creation and decay are central to Nymphidia. Submerged on a subaqueous stage, Krikzoni’s figures pose and gaze directly at the viewer from a shorefront surrounded by abstract flowers that bloom and wither around them. Krikzoni’s techniques incorporate staining, pouring, and glazing, as well as using freshly cut flowers as tools to paint. The artist describes them as ‘threatening rather than decorative, soaked in brine and emanating fumes — reworked symbols of femininity that aim to defy stereotypical portrayals.’