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“Anna Mavromatis: Romancing the Myth”

by Philip Kelleher Glasstire, October 13, 2024

Delicately constructed paper and cloth dresses are suspended from the ceiling and surrounded by vinyl wall text that offers a slew of sexist turns-of-phrase so often directed toward women: “Stay still. Smile,” “Pretend you are happy,” “Do as you are told!” The genteel dresses are handmade and the phrases are selected by Anna Mavromatis for her current exhibition, Romancing the Myth, at Barbara Davis Gallery. The two groupings of things (dresses and text) might indeed suggest two sides of the same repressive coin that constructs a normative or mythic “woman” — the subject is, from the one side, cultivated through fashion as a demonstration of civility and, from the other, repressed through shaming as a rejection of incivility. By presenting these two elements, Mavromatis challenges the vicissitudes of patriarchal repression, and more than that her work highlights two important tactics of feminist resistance: satire and coalition building.

From Donna Tennant’s Review of Stay still. Smile! at Visual Art Source:

A sense of loss and separation permeates her work, bringing to it a feeling of melancholy. These haunting dresses convey the artist’s beliefs and wide range of experiences. There is history and tradition, ritual and remembrance in Mavromatis’s work, all of which lend it a powerful presence.

Narrated through the blue and white colors of her homeland, Mavromatis expresses her emotional connection to photographs and mementos that she keeps. In her printmaking, cicada wings echo the shape of Byzantine ornamentation, creating a unique rhythm throughout the collection. When looking at these patterns, the viewer can almost hear the loud collective humming of the cicadas.

Kathryn Hall, Curatorial Fellow at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft

The materials price goes to Anna Mavromatis’ lyrical assemblage, or rather accordion-folded artist book, called Urban after hours. I think the materiality of this work, combining monotypes and collaged elements, also contributes to the very active presence of this object and displays a heightened emotive quality on a smaller scale. It also translated beautifully when seen on a large scale during the reviewing process.

Dena M. Woodall, Ph.D, Curator, Prints & Drawings at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston