ABOUT ME

Loukia Richards comes from an old, affluent Peloponnesian family of intellectuals engaging in trade, poetry and politics. Her grandmother taught her how to stitch with 12 and Loukia became a passionate embroiderer for life. She is now an interdisciplinary artist and curator working with textile, jewellery and performance. She is the author of "Stitchathon", a crossover of embroidery and improvisational theater reflecting her experiences with human bonding in southern Greece in the early 1980s. She has also invented "Trash Safari", a surreal participatory performance in public space.

Fascinated by the visual language of Tarot, Loukia developed - together with her partner Christoph Ziegler - "Tarot Moebling", a divinatory play strongly influenced by Fritz Perls' Gestalt practice. Loukia is also the co-founder of FaveLAB, an Athens based Artist Residency and Exhibition programme.

Before turning into a full time artist, Loukia had a long and intensive career in the media sector (press, film, advertising). Her main interests are: history, politics, nature. While a student in Berlin, Loukia changed more than thirty low paid manual jobs to make ends meet and became an insider in proletarian culture and slang. The experience shaped her and helped her understand politics in the making.

Loukia has been nominated twice for the Herbert Hofmann Prize (Munich, 2020 and 2017). She co-designed and co-curated Wert/voll, a double jewellery art show at Federal Environment Agency and Grassi Museum Leipzig (2019). She was a European Prize for Applied Arts/Jewellery 2018 nominee.

Loukia is a scholar of Fulbright Foundation, Onassis Benefit Foundation, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Foundation.
She is a graduate of Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin (Diplom Designerin, 1993) and National Kapodistrian University of Athens (Economics, 1988).