The solo exhibition of Deni Theocharaki, featuring works of painting and photography, installations, and audiovisual media, centers around the old car assembly factory of TEOKAR ABEE in Volos and is hosted at the "Hellenic Cosmos" Cultural Center.


2024, charcoal, colored charcoal, ink, pastel, 99 x 189 cm 

After her successful presence in significant group exhibitions in London, Seoul, New York, and Miami, visual artist Deni Theocharaki returns to Athens to create a contemporary art project at the "Hellenic Cosmos" Cultural Center, a multimedia art experience.


2019, charcoal on an old assembly design applied to canvas, 98 x 200 cm 

The artist is inspired by a significant piece of Greek industrial history and opens the gates of her mnemonic universe to the viewer, turning their visit into a unique sensory experience.

In the multifaceted and multi-layered art collections she presents, her canvases become the old assembly designs (blueprints) used for car production at the iconic TEOKAR ABEE factory (1980-1995) of the Theocharakis family.

The factory was one of the most significant business investments in the industrial development of Greece. 29 years after its closure, it has now been abandoned.


2019, charcoal, collage on an old assembly design applied to canvas, 90 x 154 cm 

The artist returns to the old family factory, which she remembers bustling with life, and now faces decay, decline, and abandonment. She captures valuable images of the dystopian, vandalized landscape with her camera, carefully collecting designs, papers, fabrics, leathers, and anything else that could be preserved.

On the old materials, "Theocharaki unfolds various thematic aspects, sometimes with pen, sometimes with charcoal or vivid oil colors, depicting – with different techniques – unique and imaginative worlds that balance between the realistic and the surreal", as noted by Museologist Sophia E. Peloponnisiou-Vasilakou.

Visual artist, photographer, and architect Manolis Babousis points out that "while Theocharaki has her gaze fixed on the future and innovation, she continues to draw from the visible and invisible aspects of memory and experience. She assembles everything into images, photos, designs, and paintings. Her photographs capture the uniqueness of the architecture, machinery, and objects of an era. Her lines become stone, rocks, trees, forests, castles, vertical cities, vertical, parallel, intersecting labyrinths."


2023, oil on an old assembly design applied to canvas, 100 x 134 cm 

Each work by Deni Theocharaki is a text of identity, an act of communicating emotions, thoughts, and concerns, awakening the viewer and encouraging an alternative view of reality.



As Art Historian Dr. Thodoris Koutsogiannis points out, the artist "directs her exhibition narrative with almost organic, almost inevitable objects from the factory, as ready-made fragments of memories, with the space acting as a quasi-ark of a dynamic past. She attempts to preserve the individual and collective memory from TEOKAR's activities while artistically transforming and commemorating it."

 

2020, ink on an old assembly design applied to canvas, 74 x 100 cm 

Biography:

Visual artist DENI THEOCHARAKI loves traveling around the world and capturing images of everyday life with her camera. Although each country has its own customs and traditions, she never ceases to be surprised by the similarities that run through the seemingly different cultures of the people.

Her travel experiences transform into art. Through the various stimuli and emotions she experiences by observing different aspects of global everyday life, she molds a new reality in her works, seemingly complex and labyrinthine. A reality which, like in real life, is full of distinct paths leading to different destinations.

Her artistic creation differentiates itself, refusing to identify with specific movements or techniques. Her writing is uncompromising and adventurous, constantly seeking new ways of expression with different materials, textures, and techniques.

Deni Theocharaki has presented her works in both solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. One of her works has been selected to be part of the collection of the National Gallery-Museum of Alexandros Soutsos.

She holds an MBA from NYU Stern Business School, is a graduate of the Department of Economics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts.