Of Greek origin / Born in Alexandria, Egypt / She studied Fine Arts, Printmaking, Typography and Graphic Design at Maidstone College of Art (N.D.D.) in Kent, England (1961-1965) /
My first artistic recollections date from my early childhood in Alexandria. One summer afternoon while visiting an aunt I was put in a bedroom for a nap. That room was very dark. Suddenly through a little hole on the wooden shutter filtered light cast scenes from the street below. The scenes were projected in reverse on the ceiling! It was like trying to capture an elusive spirit. Like when the sun filters through a closed shutter and illuminates the dust particles. You cannot capture them but it plays on your mind. And that is what Art is for me: Trying to turn my mind into a camera obscura, which is due to interpret only my personal reality.
Camera obscura literally means dark chamber. It is a black box, an enclosure with an aperture usually provided with a lens, through which light from external objects enters to form an image on the opposite surface. My work always has been the imprint of the image on a surface. Whether it’s printed on paper, canvas or projected on a wall. Ever since I was an art student in England and for a number of years afterwards, I produced exclusively prints. Mainly woodlock prints and linocuts. They were always hand printed with the back of a spoon. My background in advertising a s a graphic designer for a long period of time taught me a personal way of perceiving the so-called reality. Central to this issue is the problem of how we are controlled by the structures of
the visual information systems that pre-package images, editing and manipulating before we are allowed access to them in the mass media. Typography too, when isolated and blown up can produce a tremendous impact to the eye and in the mind of the viewer.
I always have been fascinated by word, which I use as images. Violence in politics and everyday life is the subject which occupies my mind most. For many years I have been collecting newspaper clippings of articles dealing with crimes and violent political acts. I call that gesture “Appropriation art”, meaning work that lifted images from art history and popular culture to comment on history and culture themselves. But by the time those images reach my studio, the information is no longer current to the point that the depicted violence looses its vitality, in other words it acquires a certain distance from its object. Sometimes one such discovered image shocks me because it reminds me - through some tug of my memory – of something which seems strangely familiar. So I reconstruct the appropriated image in my computer and give it a title depicted from subjects dealt with in earlier periods of Art History, mainly the Renaissance, in order to help the viewer share my experience. For me, the digital manipulation of the image – whether it derives from pictures appropriated from the daily press, my own digital photographs or scenes videotaped from the TV news – is the weapon I use in order to eliminate, so to speak, the reality that surround me and reconstruct a personal reality, sarcastic, biting but never the less filled with the fears and desires that take hold of me.
I would like hereby to underline the fact that over the years, the use of digital photography has become my major medium of expressing my feelings and intentions – always confronting it in a conceptual way.
Workshops, Residencies & Lectures
2006 January: Seminar at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Maryland, US, during the artist’s resi-dencyin preparation for the show “ The Flowers of Evil”.
2004 March: A week’s residency and seminar at the University of Quito, Ecuador, organized by the faculty’s department of Theatrical Studies.
2003 May: Residency at Columbia College Chicago and use of their digital dept., for the realization of the series “The Clear Valley Incident 1615 – 2003” as the artist’s participation at the Human Rights Festival (May 2003)
1999 October: Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Press for the collaborative edition of (15) Artists Books, “5 DEE(D)S + 1 OWE”
1999 July: “Workshop of Digital Images” at Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Skopelos, Greece
1999 May: “The Art of the News”. Lecture/Slides to a group of NYU (New York University) Media Ecology students.
1999 May: Edition of 4 large digital prints (90x180 cm) on mylar, based on Euripides’ tragedy “Bacchae” in collaboration with Lionheart Gallery, Boston MA and Harvard University.
1998 November: Residency and Workshop, with “The use of New Technologies” at Richmond College, American International University, London, UK.
1997 November: “A PACK OF LIES” Project, produced during a Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Press in Maryland, US.
1997 November: Lecture and slides projection at the College of the Holy Cross, Worsester, Massachusetts, US.
1997 November: Lecture by the artist on her work at the Corcoran Gallery Washington DC. After an invitation from Pyramid Atlantic Press and the Crossing Over/Changing Places Consortium, Washington DC.
1997 November: Printmaking workshop and the use of New Technologies at Richmond College, American International University, London, UK.
Collaboration
1996 – 1998: Collaboration with the renowned stage director Theodoros Terzopoulos, on a project consisting of digital images deriving from video stills, based on Euripides’ tragedy “Bacchae”
Artists’ Books © Despina Meimaroglou
The Mirror is Always There - A selection of poems by the Puerto Rican poet Alba Ambert, Edition 95, hand bound, silk-screen and photo-offset, Represented by Hugo Frick Collection, Tubingen, Germany
Deadly Weapon – Based on the description of the burial of Christ (ST JOHN/The Bible), Edition 75, hand bound, silk-screen and photo-offset, Represented by PrintedMatter Bookstore, DIA Foundation for the Arts, New York and Pyramid Atlantic Press, Washington DC
Déjà vu - With texts from news reports on violence, English edition 150, Greek edition 200, litho and photo-offset, Represented by PrintedMatter Bookstore, DIA Foundation for the Arts, New York and Pyramid Atlantic Press, Washington DC
This is Not A Movie. It’s – Edition 1000, photo-offset, Represented by PrintedMatter Bookstore, DIA Foundation for the Arts, New York
Women - Edition 1000, photo-offset, Represented by PrintedMatter Bookstore, DIA Foundation for the Arts, New York and Pyramid
Thanksgiving, Washington DC – Edition 20, Digitally manipulated photographic images, printed on a RHICO printer, in November 1997, co-edited by Pyramid Atlantic Press and the artist. Represented Pyramid Atlantic Press, MA, USA
LOVE LUST & DESIRE - Edition 25, Digitally manipulated photographic images and texts, edited by the artist in April 1998, on the occasion of the Global Women Project organized by the Claudia DeMonte Art Dept., University of Maryland, USA, for an exhibition (June 2000) at <White Columns> Exhibition space, New York.
Till Heaven and Earth Pass - Edition 20, Digitally manipulated photographic images, printed by the artist. On Canson paper, 170g, on an Epson 1520 Printer. The photos were taken with a Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD5
GENESIS - Digitally manipulated photographic images, printed by the artist in 4 handmade copies serving as a mock-up (of digital photos taken from the TV news in April 1999
5 DEE(D)S + 1 OWE - Digitally manipulated photographic images deriving from a television program, news clippings and words taken from the dictionary, printed by the artist during a collaboration with Pyramid Atlantic Press, in October 1999 in an edition of 15 artist – books
EAST OF EDEN – Edition 500, numbered and signed copies, Photo offset, Published by FUTURA Publications, Athens, Greece, in September 2000
DISCOVERING THE OTHER – Artist Book. Six numbered and signed copies, printed and hand bound by the artist, based on photos taken in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the spring of 2005
HO CHI MINH CITY - Artist Book. Six numbered and signed copies, printed and hand bound by the artist, based on photos taken Saigon, VietNam in the spring of 2005
ORANGE - Artist Book. Six numbered and signed copies, printed and hand bound by the artist, based on photos taken in Cambodia in the spring of 2005