Alexandra Christou
Works from the 90’s, Athens
November 19, 2026–December 19, 2026Opening: , 6-8 pm, 19 November 2026
Galerie Basia Embiricos, Paris
The Breeder presents Works from the 90’s, Athens, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Alexandra Christou (1950–2009) at Galerie Basia Embiricos in Paris. Moving between Athens and the Greek island of Astypalaia, Christou developed an intensely personal practice spanning portraits, nudes and scenes of everyday life. Working independently of established artistic circles, she forged a raw, vivid visual language shaped by keen social observation, lived experience and an expansive imagination. Following her death in Athens in 2009, her work remained largely unseen until its rediscovery in 2023. Since then, it has reached wider audiences, revealing a singular voice in late twentieth-century painting. The exhibition marks the first comprehensive presentation of her work in Paris.
Throughout the exhibition, Christou’s fascination with female figures comes to the foreground. These are the women who inhabited her inner world: figures encountered in passing, waiting on the street, dancing, talking, sharing secrets or sitting on staircases illuminated by streetlights. Others are imaginative versions of herself and those close to her, inhabiting surreal compositions that give form to their inner lives. Untethered from the social conventions that might otherwise define them, these women occupy a world of their own, shaped by Christou’s imagination and her sensitivity to the possibilities of collective reality.
In her watercolours, the female form emerges through colour and shape. Hair and clothing dissolve into their surroundings, leaving fleeting impressions of women encountered during her walks in the city. Soft strokes and vibrant colors capture their beauty, recalling the transient nature of a passing encounter. This fleeting quality is echoed in Christou’s expressive portraits, whether autobiographical or drawn from the people and places around her. Her figures possess a striking sense of timelessness, existing somewhere between past and present, retaining both the urgency of everyday life and the enduring quality of memory.
In Fight against the Dying of the Light, Christou depicts herself seated in her armchair, a familiar setting that reappears in Portrait A in armchair Circus Clown Face. In the latter, she embraces her beloved pets, Rouni and Troboni, among figures drawn from her personal life. A meat grinder, a recurring motif in her explorations of Athenian urban life, spills across her clown-painted face in flame-like strands. Surreal at first glance, the work unfolds as a network of associations in which ordinary objects acquire psychological and symbolic weight.
Elsewhere, in works such as Untitled (1996) and In Der Dushe, a quieter dimension of Christou’s practice emerges. Held in the embrace of her lover, the artist seems momentarily released from the restless imagery that populates her imagination. The lovers’ bodies fill the canvas, leaving little room for anything beyond their closeness. Here, intimacy becomes a refuge, and the complexities of daily life give way to the immediacy of being together.
Alexandra Christou (1950–2009) was a self-taught Greek artist whose figurative practice drew on personal experience, the Athenian underground scene and international influences. Working primarily during the 1980s and 1990s, she developed a raw, expressive visual language that moved freely between observation and imagination. Following her posthumous rediscovery, her work was included in Public Secrets, curated by Milovan Farronato at The Breeder, Athens, in 2025. In 2026, Sadie Coles HQ, London, presented Taverna, a solo exhibition of her work and The Breeder hosted the solo exhibition The Gravity of Desire in Athens.
