Maria Joannou paints everyday intimacies with a quiet sense of detachment, creating figures that balance the abstract and the iconic while remaining grounded in physical reality. Her bodies carry weight, shadow, and presence, conveying the fullness of life without resorting to photorealism. Faces occasionally appear, but each figure retains its individuality, radiating a subtle gravitas that speaks to lived experience and the soul embedded in flesh.
Her practice extends beyond painting into sculpture and installation, exploring how material and form can reflect memory, identity, and cultural narratives. Surfaces are layered, disrupted, or reconfigured, emphasizing fragility, transformation, and resilience. Joannou’s works operate in the space between permanence and change, inviting viewers to pause and engage with both the intimate and the symbolic.
Central to her approach is the intersection of personal and collective histories. By reworking familiar forms and stripping back overt signifiers, she creates spaces that encourage reflection on identity, belonging, and the tension between visibility and erasure. Joannou’s art transforms everyday gestures into meditations on presence, connection, and the subtle complexities of human experience. ...
