ICONS

Orthodox icons rooted in Ancient Greek, Hellenistic and Roman pictorial traditions inspire my recent work.

The saint, illuminated by eternal light, invites us to a face-to-face encounter. Icons are objects of worship and meditation, and offer a way to a more meaningful present.

Christian faith, its concepts, symbols and visual representations, have shaped European culture. In times of nihilism and emotional poverty, icons still caress humans, animals, nature, angels and saints with endless grace, and perpetuate the ideals of harmony and justice.

THE ARTIST

Loukia Richards is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer and lecturer working with textile, jewelry, performance, and video. She comes from an old, affluent Peloponnesian family of Greek merchants and intellectuals. Her grandmother taught her how to stitch when she was a child, and Loukia became a passionate embroiderer for life.

Loukia is the author of "Stitchathon", a crossover of embroidery and improvisational theater reflecting her experiences with social bonding in Greece of the 1980s.
She has also invented "Trash Safari", a surreal participatory performance in public space. Fascinated with the visual language of Tarot, Loukia developed Tarot Moebling together with her partner Christoph Ziegler, a divinatory play strongly influenced by Fritz Perls' Gestalt practice.

Loukia is the co-founder of the Artist Residency program FaveLAB Athens, as well as of SMCK Magazine for Independent Artists, and of SMCK On Reel video festival.

Before she became a full time artist, Loukia had a long career in the media sector, i.e. press, film, publishing. While studying in Berlin, Loukia had many low paid manual jobs to make ends meet. This experience has shaped her and helped her gain insight into Berlin's proletarian culture and slang.

STATIONS

Loukia was nominated for the prestigious jewelry award Herbert Hofmann Prize in 2017, 2020 and 2025. She was nominated for the European Prize for Applied Arts/Jewelry in 2018 and 2021.

Between 1999-2025, she participated in numerous art exhibitions in Germany, Netherlands, USA, UK, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, Ireland.

Between 2013-2025, Loukia co-curated more than fifty international art exhibitions (Myths / Initiation Project / FaveLAB) in Germany, Netherlands and Greece, among which Wert/voll at Federal Environment Agency Dessau and Grassi Museum Leipzig (2019), and Metamorphoses at Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein Munich (2022).

Loukia received the Fulbright Award for Mid-Career Artists in 2007. She is a scholar of the Onassis Benefit Foundation (1989-1993) and Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Foundation (2011-2012).
She earned the distinction "Selected Maker" by Crafts Council England in 2005.

She is a graduate of Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin (Diplom Designerin, 1993) and National Kapodistrian University of Athens (BA in Economics, 1988).