ATHENS VOICE

Peggy Kliafa: My works surprise the viewer

The artist talked to us on the occasion of her exhibition “Healing the Grid” at Zoumboulakis Galleries.

By Niki-Maria Koskina

Visual artist Peggy Kliafa presents her new solo exhibition at Zoumboulakis Galleries, approaching art as a healing process.

Peggy Kliafa, in her new exhibition at Zoumboulakis Galleries, presents works of art inspired by the field of medicine. Entire sculptures – even large-scale ones – have been created from pills blisters, capsules of various colors, and pharmacy bags. Who would have imagined, for example, that a large-scale chandelier could be created just from transparent gelatin capsules? Apart from the fact that the visual effect is extremely impressive, these works invite us to reflect on the connection between art and medicine and the therapeutic aspect of an exhibition and a work of art both for its creator and for the visitors-viewers. After all, this is the subject of this specific project titled “Healing the Grid”.

Art and healing or healing through art: it is a recurrent theme in your work. How do you believe that art heals? Firstly, the artist, and secondly, the viewer of a work?

Art, and especially visual art, as a creation, is capable of “healing” either the artist or every person who wants to express themselves through it. Manual labor and its visual aesthetic effect, dedication to this purpose, and “clearing” the mind of worries, something like meditation, often help. Visual creation can also achieve release of emotions through non-verbal means of expression and give great satisfaction when original thinking gives birth to a new work of art from scratch. Art therapy is increasingly being practiced internationally, and in many countries, both creative work with teachers-therapists and visits to museums and art spaces are now prescribed.

Which brings us to the other kind of therapy through art, the one experienced by the viewer of the works. It certainly is a very subjective experience. For those who can actually enjoy a work of art, stop time and immerse themselves in it, I believe it is a powerful and healing experience. For the viewer, healing often comes through emotional or physical engagement with the work. When a work triggers a sense of recognition, identification, or even unease, then it opens up space for reflection, perhaps even catharsis. We are not talking about healing in medical terms, but about a deeper, experiential shift.

For me, art is not just an expression, but a tool for processing, understanding and transformation. As a visual artist, through creation I can delve deeper into questions that concern me – existential, social, political. This process is therapeutic because it gives form to the formless, brings light to dark areas, and allows me to release and restore.

Would you like to explain the title of the exhibition? Does art act as a cure of the urban grid? Does it act outside the boundaries of the city and reality?

Let’s define the grid, which in the context of the exhibition, is both physical and symbolic, metaphorical: it is the urban grid, the city itself, social networks and the internet, digital surveillance, but also the human body – a system that makes our life easier on the one hand but limits us on the other. The grid, in a sense, includes everything that forms the contemporary, demanding Western lifestyle, especially in big cities.

I reflect on the ways we choose to heal ourselves and how we deal with the pathologies of this stressful lifestyle. My suggestion is to reflect and perhaps avoid quick, superficial solutions of unnecessary medications in favor of a painful, slow process of changing ourselves and our attitudes. Medicines work wonders. Thanks to them, many people live, get out of bed every day, and are functional, but they should be consumed in moderation, like everything in life.

In the context of the exhibition, art acts as an interference, a point of rupture within the normality of the city and speed. A pause and review, the search for the root of the problems. It is not necessarily escaping from reality, but renegotiating reality.

Pills-capsules, pharmacy bags, pills blisters: why do you use these materials in your works?

I use these materials for their aesthetic value, as well as their meanings and associations. Pills’ various colors and shapes, capsules and pills blisters’ transparency and shine, or aluminum blisters that are small sculptures in themselves, create a multitude of materials and ideas, which I use as another artist would use paints, clay, mosaic tiles, etc. In my chandeliers, the transparent capsules turn into small crystals that reflect light, in my shields, the blisters give the impression of an impenetrable metal surface, in the “wallpaper” of pharmacy bags, the neat accumulation of plastic becomes a modern palimpsest of city images. The possibilities are endless.

On the other hand, they carry a heavy load of meanings, often somewhere between therapeutic and toxic. A pill can be a medicine or an addiction; a medicine bag can bring relief or be a reminder of a long-standing illness. They also embody the logic of the grid in a very tangible way – they are measurable, standardized, clean, almost impersonal.

What are your favorite materials? Are they often related to medicine or not? Can every object potentially be transformed into a work of art?

Many objects can be transformed into works of art, as long as one recognizes their potential. Often and for a long time, I am surrounded by a “clutter” of materials related to medicine, its packaging, medical waste without resulting in creative ideas. And suddenly one day a project idea is born inspired by these everyday, invisible objects. Thus, transparent gelatin and cellulose capsules that resemble crystals became chandeliers, pills became mosaics, pills blisters became various works of geometric abstraction.

I generally like to work with materials that carry memory – whether personal or collective. Furthermore, many of these pills blisters or bags are already used. There are often qualities in materials, such as transparency, shine, sculpturality, that can acquire “artistic value” with appropriate use. I also find interesting the element of surprise produced as they can give different impressions depending on the distance from which they are viewed. I am often asked about the processing these materials have undergone to look like this. At the moment I do not change them and the works in this exhibition that include colors like green, red, gold, etc. are their true colors. I only create with expired and withdrawn medicines. Collecting and classifying them is a difficult process. This is also one of the main reasons why it takes me a long time to complete my works.

How does our existence and our movement in the city and its chaos affect our lives? Are your works a way to put this external chaos in linear order?

The city defines us to a large extent. Our daily existence within it is characterized by paces that we do not control: rush, sounds, images, data, mass movements. Its structures permeate our bodies. Within this urban chaos, art for me is not a tool for imposing order – I do not want to create “linearity” in the sense of conformity, but as an act of understanding, symbolism and, perhaps, relief. Perhaps with my insistence on structure, classification, geometry, and repetition, I respond visually to this experience by recomposing it.

I’m trying to show that chaos is not a problem to be solved, but a space for reinvention. The city and modern culture offer us an unprecedented quality of life, which we often take for granted and do not realize its value. I would like my work to be a visual reflection on how the city affects our lives – but also a quiet resistance to it. It would be nice to distance ourselves from the fast pace of everyday life from time to time and take advantage of its positive elements, while reducing its negative ones.

How does the visitor move through your installation? Is there a logical path? Do you suggest an alternative route that the viewer can follow to escape the reality of the city? What is the relationship between their body and the works of the exhibition and how can they have a therapeutic effect on them?

The installation does not suggest a specific path – it is multi-focal and experiential. The viewer is invited to take a tour of the exhibition, to move away in order to see the large works/installations and to come closer to discover – often with surprise – the unexpected materials and their qualities. There are points that call for close contact, such as small details or transparent layers, and others that activate the spatial experience.

The central large-scale work entitled “Chandelier III, Ziggurat – Ianos”, a large lighting installation in the form of an inverted Ziggurat, calls the viewer to move around it. There are also two imaginary diagonals: on one side hang two columns that look sturdy from a distance, but are made of transparent capsules and move like “air,” and on the other diagonal there is a pyramid-sculpture and a wall artwork-double pyramid or rhombus.

My goal is for the viewer to feel their body present. Not to forget the city, but to see it differently – to notice how they themselves are inscribed within the grid. Here, treatment is physical, not abstract: it goes through sensation, through observation, through participation. Large-scale works of art that use light have a special power to activate the viewer in ways that go beyond the traditional viewing experience. You don’t just look at the work—you are in it. Light fills the space, touches the body, affects vision, and often creates illusions or conditions that require physical movement and adaptation. It can affect mood (relaxation, tension, awe) and activate attention and perception mechanisms — it makes the viewer observe actively rather than passively. I hope it is a “therapeutic” experience as well.

What are your plans after this exhibition?

Ιn parallel with my solo exhibition, I am participating in a group exhibition entitled “Elements of Harmony” in New York, also curated by Dr. Sozita Goudouna, under the auspices of the Greece in USA organization and produced by Maria Kosmidou. In October I will participate in a group exhibition of artists’ books entitled “BOOKMORPHS: Artists’ Books from Greece & the United Kingdom” at the Hellenic Centre in London, with the participation of Greek and British artists. The exhibition is curated by Project 2 Athens (Fiona Mouzakiti & Despina Stavrou) and Christina Mitrentse, while the introduction of the exhibition catalogue has been written by the Director of the Greek Centre, Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki. I am planning a solo exhibition at the Lola Nikolaou Gallery in Thessaloniki in 2026. Other projects/exhibitions are still in the planning stage.

After the “Healing the Grid” exhibition, it is very likely that I will continue to explore and work on subject areas related to art, science and society, and in particular to medicines, the biopolitics of body, urbanity and healing.