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Peggy Kliafa “Healing the Grid” at Zoumboulakis Galleries
Peggy Kliafa’s new solo exhibition titled “Healing the Grid” at the Zoumboulakis Galleries, is a visual installation in which Art intersects with Medicine. It is the beginning of the autumn season and the white space of the Zoumboulakis Galleries is filled with a large chandelier-sculpture, with luminous columns made of capsules-pills and a series of wall and sculpture assemblages made of pills blisters. Peggy Kliafa created a multimedia installation dealing with issues related to medicine, healing and the treatment of the body and soul. It is complemented by a large wall collage made of pharmacy bags.
” The grid is the silent dictator of modernity. It structures our cities, our screens, and even our medicine cabinets. From the relentless right angles of Manhattan’s skyline to the clinical precision of pharmaceutical packaging, the grid imposes an illusion of order upon the chaos of life. Yet, beneath its rational veneer lies a paradox—it both sustains and suffocates, heals, and controls”, explains the exhibition’s curator, Dr. Sozita Goudouna.
From ancient Ziggurats to modern architectural grids
In her solo exhibition, “Healing the Grid,” Peggy Kliafa addresses this duality, drawing on the ancient ziggurat as a counter-symbol to the flat, oppressive logic of the modern grid. Ziggurats were massive structures built by the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau. They were in the form of a stepped pyramid with the main temple located at the top of the structure.
The exhibition does not merely present an aesthetic contrast between two forms, the rigid grid and the ascending ziggurat. It stages a philosophical and historical confrontation. The ziggurat, a sacred structure from Mesopotamia represents a different way of understanding space, health, and society—one that was holistic, stratified, and spiritually engaged. Meanwhile, the modernist grid, with its cold efficiency, reflects our contemporary condition: a world where systemic health crises—pollution, urban alienation, mental health epidemics—are met not with structural change but with pills, quick fixes that mask rather than mend.
The grid through the eyes of Peggy Kliafa
Much ink has been spilled on the grid that dominated and unfortunately still stands among us and the extent to which it has influenced and defined our lives. However, I believe that when Art spills its own ink, it does so in the best way.
The exhibition unfolds as a dialogue between the imposed order of the city grid and the organic yet algorithmic logic of the body. It is is not merely an aesthetic inquiry but a critical reflection on how modernity’s architectural and artistic ideals are inscribed onto the flesh—both the body politic and the physical body. In Kliafa’s vision, the grid is no longer just a structure; it is a living, breathing entity, a map of both the city and the self.
