By Venia Pastaka

Art Historian

The internationally acclaimed artist, Simone Leigh, is exhibiting three of her sculptures at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre’s Agora from 28 April to 31 October 2025.

This will be her first exhibition in Europe, following her award of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2022, while the Greek public will have the opportunity to see her important work up close and get to know it. Leigh’s core work is an exploration of black female identity and her influence is drawn from African art and tradition. Her work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, including the Guggenheim in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and elsewhere.

In Athens, three monumental bronze sculptures, Vessel, representing a female figure whose oval form of her body is empty inside, and Bisi, which also transforms the inside of the female body into a vessel, are on display and are dedicated to the important Nigerian curator Bisi Silva, and Herm, which represents a stylized female torso and which alludes to the ancient Hermes stelae that served as odos, protectors and demarcation symbols.

Simone Leigh

The works interact both with each other, in the space that creates a scalene triangle, and with the viewer who can navigate between them. Leigh’s sculptures are imposing, dominating the space while harmoniously blending the classical with the contemporary. Starting from the figurative, removing the facial features, the sculptor proceeds to a more architectural arrangement of the body, creating a torso -in a geometric shape. This facilitates the transformation of the work into a symbol and activates the concept of the woman – container with whatever implications this may have.

It is worth noting that the exhibition is curated by Gabriella Triantafyllaki, the architectural design by Giorgos Rymenidis, the construction of the bases of the sculptures by Vassilis Gerodimos and the lighting design by Eleftheria Deko.