Margarita Myrogianni
Iasonos Street, Metaxourgeio

“Iasonos Street, Metaxourgeio. 

In this exhibition, I tell a story through 72 black-and-white photographs, 17 color photographs, and 13 bronze sculptures, bringing a 25-year journey full circle.

The theme of this story stems from Iasonos Street in Metaxourgeio, which I first visited in 2001. It is a pedestrian street that is home, among other things, to the brothels that were relocated from Troumba when it was shut down in September 1967.

I fell in love with the street right from the start. I was excited by the lustful glances of the men walking down the street, seeking pleasure. Glances that I never felt were offensive; on the contrary, they sparked my curiosity to cross the red light, to see what it was like inside, to meet the daughters of Aphrodite, the Priestesses of Love, Aspasia, Timandra, Lulu, the heroines I’d been reading about since my teenage years. To hear their secrets, to enter their world, to learn from them. Now that I’ve done it, I’m a little wiser.”

-Margarita Myrogianni, July 2026

The Breeder Gallery presents Margarita Myrogianni’s second solo exhibition at the space, titled Iasonos Street, Metaxourgeio. The exhibition takes its inspiration from the brothels on Iasonos Street in Metaxourgeio, where the gallery is also located.

The exhibition does not attempt to reveal an unknown world or to fit it into a predetermined narrative. Instead, it showcases a reality that is already present within the urban fabric. Photography functions as a direct medium of documentation, isolating moments, figures, objects, and details that would otherwise remain on the margins of the city’s visual narrative. The scene determines the composition, and light directs the gaze and, with it, the emotion. This approach engages with the tradition of photojournalism, from Weegee to Henri Cartier-Bresson, and with the concept of the Decisive Moment, where even the smallest detail can become a subject of significance.

In the exhibition, photographs coexist with cast bronze sculptures, creating two different ways of engaging the same experience. Whereas photography relies on choice, swiftness and the moment, sculpture requires time, gesture, construction, and material manipulation. The sculptures derive largely from objects that Myrogianni encountered in the places she visited or sensations and images that emerged during her research. The black and white photographs function as a visual vocabulary: they document the objects in their natural environment before they are isolated, transformed, and redefined as sculptures.

The color photographic works, meanwhile, use primary and complementary colors to structure the image, conveying intensity in a painterly yet simultaneously abstract dimension. Throughout her  body of work, there are significant connections to postwar color photography and, in particular, to the work of William Eggleston, for whom the everyday environment served as an equal field of artistic exploration. This perspective extends to her exploration of the dynamics of space and the ways in which it can be transformed, taking on different qualities and meanings. Her relationship with space is reciprocal: the environment serves as a source of inspiration for her work, while the works, in turn, redefine the space in which they are placed.

Myrogianni’s visual language moves between abstraction, surrealism, and representation. Familiar objects acquire a new presence beyond their original function, creating unexpected connections between the real and the unfamiliar, the everyday and the imaginary. The figure of the seashell alludes to the Birth of Aphrodite and to the symbolic concepts of beauty and femininity, while the lock evokes the notions of access, the inaccessible, and the hidden. Similarly, the references to Saint Lucy and the eyes create a dialogue around vision, the gaze, and desire.

Time is another fundamental element of the exhibition: it is captured in the fleeting moment of the photograph and in the stillness of the sculptures. Iasonos changes while simultaneously retaining identity; the photographs capture moments that cannot be repeated, while the sculptures isolate and preserve objects and forms outside the flow of time. “They’re always the same and always different,” notes Weegee, a phrase that serves as the exhibition’s underlying leitmotif.

The sequence of works ultimately forms a unified journey through the street and its spaces, as seen through Myrogianni’s eyes. Photographs, sculptures, objects, colors, and references function as fragments of a shared experience, revealing not only what the artist sees but also the way in which she sees it. Iasonos’s world is not, after all, truly hidden. It is already present and active within the fabric of the city. What shifts in the context of the exhibition is not its existence, but the way we perceive it.

Margarita Myrogianni is a visual artist. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, at Vakalo School of Art and Design and at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

Her solo and group exhibitions include Jewellery Was Never Innocent by THE GREAT DESIGN DISASTER (Milan); Transmutation at The Breeder Gallery (Athens); CONSTRUCTIONS at Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery (Athens); Volatile at the Holy Trinity Church (Vienna); Short Lines and Tall Shapes at the Rosegger-Grundschule (Berlin); a.O. – b.c. (after Olympics – before crisis) at the State of Concept (Athens); UN/FASHION, 1st Athens Fashion Film Festival at the Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall (Athens); Pair Production at the New Court Gallery (Derbyshire); and Towards Tinos, Cultural Foundation of Tinos (Tinos). She has collaborated on artistic and research projects with institutions including the Acropolis Museum, the British Museum, Benaki Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art and the National Theatre of Greece. A work by Margarita Myrogianni is held in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, following its donation by the Daskalopoulos Collection.