Chrysa Kanari

Chrysa Kanari(b.2002) is a Cypriot artist currently based in London. Her paintings explore the abject, as the rotten and criminal aspect of the human condition- war, crime, atrocity.

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History and Politics are at the core of her practice. She often paints from archival or media-circulated imagery to deal with ideas of selective memory, erasure, truth and representation. The reworking of the image is for her a process of unlearning and relearning history. A process of renegotiation and reimagination of narrative through paint. 

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Kanari is devoted to depicting the figure and particularly the face. She often poses her subjects in direct confrontation with the viewer. This forced proximity and the ambiguity of the state of the figures contributes to the discomfort of the viewer.

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Through the unconventional use of color, the dramatic use of light and an eagerness for depiction, she aims showcase paint’s expressive capacity to convey the intensity of human emotion. Through drips and washes, the putting on and taking off of paint, the frustrated marks and smudges of charcoal, she obscures, erases and reconstructs meaning.