Aemilia Papaphilippou (based in Athens) is a prolific visual artist and thinker whose site‑specific, often interactive installations/interventions provoke with their conceptual depth with sensorial immersion. Her practice frequently explores the interplay of opposites—order and chaos, body and mind—through a central ideogram referred to as the “Chess Continuum,” which embodies connectivity and at the same time, interdependence.
This presentation is going to be about specific works from the artist but also a “behind the scenes” look into the her own “artistic gesture”,
the moment where she leaves the ethereal plane of artistic intention to meet the “haptic” plane of representation and why although the idea may appear to play a more important role, it is only when that idea is “moulded” into reality, through the representation of the material, the experience of a work of art imposes it’s own logic.
Therefore, representation is the “material” where this unnerving experience is realized, it is what is experienced and preserved out of a work of art, a painting, and a building.
Liquid Sky (2010) is a groundbreaking permanent installation at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens. It is probably the most “architectural” of all her work as it integrates art and architecture, it transforms the sloped ceiling of the centre’s lounge/bar into a dynamic LED‑sculpture complete with CNC‑cut resin, and painted reflective surfaces, corian benches and stools, and programmed lighting that simulates waves and oscillations . The red grid pattern, implying her Chess Continuum, floats above the space and reflects below—invoking cosmic horizons, the illusion of perspective, fractal self‑similarity, and the viewer’s own place within a universe in constant flux.
Through Liquid Sky, Papaphilippou invites us to recognise that while we yearn for constants—structures to anchor our perception—the cosmic dance of change and gravity presses on.
The piece merges functional design and poetic metaphor, reminding us that culture is a form of “meta‑nature” through which we seek meaning amid the ever‑shifting cosmos.
Envisaged here as an “inversion” of some of her previous works, where the installation reflects what it “sees” but in a different order, it is dense, visually arresting, and intellectually provocative, Liquid Sky exemplifies Papaphilippou’s signature approach: merging mathematical structures with visceral, sensory experience to explore the thresholds between science, art, and philosophy
Constantine Cosmas