Ioanna Limniou
Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread, the summer fields

“Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread, the summer fields.” – Hokusai

The Breeder presents Ioanna Limniou’s first solo exhibition at the gallery titled: “Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread, the summer fields” curated by Odette Kouzou. It includes a new series of works in which the artist explores matters of human/animal experience within their natural environment, agricultural life, conviviality, and the cryptic layers of the landscape, themes that are recurrent in her work. The title, originating from Hokusai’s haiku, composed at the end of his life, reveals the mystic experience of the painter as they envision themselves navigating the fields as spirits in the afterlife. In a similar manner, Limniou builds her images through the observation of the landscape and the relations that emerge within it, and narrates the stories of the subjects she observes evolved through her imagination. As a skillful colorist, she paints her portraits and landscapes by layering intense colours upon each other to create her stories and introduce her characters. Her affinity with folk painting and rural practices, having grown up in the countryside, gives an almost spiritual quality to her work. A melancholy that is prominent in her paintings, appears as a threshold between past, present and future rendering a sense of timeless spacetime.

Limniou creates images, referencing nostalgically a past era. Through exploring a history of painting, she is constantly searching for ways to redefine and unfold her craft in contemporary times. Scenes of everyday communal activities, either from laborious or celebratory rituals or even ordinary habits are consistently depicted in her oeuvre. Her characters playfully interact with the viewers, looking at us beyond the borders of the paintings, often breaking the boundaries of the canvas, and searching for ways to reveal themselves. Limniou is a storyteller. Every work reflects on a story, a scene that takes place, a character or more engaging in actions. Human presence, even in the absence of figures, is always there, serving as evidence of the overlapping experience of humans and nature. Often what may be considered mundane everyday activities come to the forefront. People working in the fields, picking apples, a couple kissing, a person riding a bicycle, a gardener tending to their plants. A sense of care is present both in the ways the painter constructs her works and in the ways that the scenes are unfolding.

Following cultural anthropologist Nadia Seremetakis, “the split between public and private memory, the narrated and unnarrated, inadvertently reveals the extent to which everyday experience is organized around reproduction of inattention, and therefore the extent to which a good deal of historical experience is relegated to forgetfulness”. In this context, Limniou explores those social implications that come with herself narrating stories and depicting characters in such a manner. Opposed to linear reproductions of history, she responds to a tradition of women related practices, transmitting history through art, craftsmanship, oral traditions, rituals, everyday habits and customs. By capturing these scenes of everyday life, she isolates those “ordinary” moments in time and gives them a different meaning and significance – a historical momentum.

Ioanna Limniou, born in 1987, lives and works in Athens, Greece. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Art, and prior to that studied Fashion Design and Art & Antiquities Conservation.

Recent exhibitions include “Moons” Enari Gallery, Amsterdam (2023), “LNDN BRLN FEST” Romantso, Athens (2023), “Looking With The Eyes of Love”,The Breeder Gallery, Athens (2023), “In Motion”, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam (2022), “Soufli & Siden”, Michael Cacoyiannis Foundation, Athens (2022), “Elpis”, Kyan Athens (2022), “NEMESIS”, The Holy Art, London (2021), “ERGA”, Byzantine Museum, Athens (2019). She has taken part in a residency in Kythnos (Thermia Project, 2023) and a research program in Soufli (Soufli & Siden, 2019)with ASFA, Konstfack University and the Swedish Institute of Athens.

Text by Odette Kouzou