Lavreotiki Artist in Residency 2025-26

Encapsulations 2025-26

During my residency with the Lavreotiki Artist-in-Residence program, I developed a studio process that treats the region’s ecosystem as a collaborator.

Lavrion’s geology was the starting point. Its mineral wealth, known since antiquity, and its use as pigment prompted the research and became the core of the work.

The region’s soil is also contaminated by both natural and man-made elements. This raised the question of how to handle the raw material in the studio and led to the idea of encapsulating those elements in glass, rendering them inert.

In summer 2025 I collected soil samples across the wider Lavrion area to test the range of color each could yield in ceramics. To avoid further handling of polluted soil, some samples were analyzed and recreated in the studio as pigments, then added to glazes on ceramic tiles.

The forms of the tiles engage the themes of my work: the Anthropocene, biomimicry and interspecies collaboration, also explored in the notebook drawings and process tiles.

For more information, see the Encapsulations project page →

LAVREOTIKI is a non-profit organization, founded in 2022 by Amalia Charikiopoulou, that connects contemporary art with the cultural heritage of the Lavreotiki district. Its 2025 residency examines how art can bridge past and present in a former mining and industrial region, now a UNESCO Global Geopark, and whether such a place can become a model for sustainable regeneration.