The culmination of Dimitra Skandali’s Jail Cell Residency is a site-specific installation titled, Loves, fears, and hopes. The sincere title refers to collapsing political systems and the social effects on individuals, culture, and heritage. From her perspective as a Greek citizen, Skandali looks at the transformational undercurrents in her country during its struggle to survive. She sees our current era as a time of widespread deconstruction and aims to push against it by channeling spirit and vital history.
Skandali has embedded her installation into the basement-level architecture and surrounding space by activating existing marks and structures. With a detailed examination and intervention, spots in the concrete floor where paint has peeled, are now representative of tiny islands floating on the larger surface. Islands play a pivotal role both formally and conceptually as symbols of the individual searching for validation in the face of adversity. The exhibition is built from everyday household objects and natural materials due to their low cost and ease of acquiring. Within the physical Jail Cell, the artist constructed an intricate web of steel wool interlaced with wire forms and strands of seaweed inspired by maps that her father would take on his fishing trips. Skandali remains fixated on the grace and freedom of light as an aid in renewal and a beacon in darkness.
Dimitra Skandali grew up on Paros, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. “I carry my island with me everywhere”, she states. She was educated in Greece and the Netherlands before moving to California, and earning her MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. Her awards and honors include the 2014 First Place from Marin MOCA, Novato, CA; the 2013 First Place-Anne Bremer Memorial Prize, and the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute; the 2012 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. She has a 2015, 2014 and 2013 ARTslant Showcase Installation Award, and she has been a selected artist for the 2013 “Biennial Project” an online Roadshow at the Venice Biennale, for the 2012 and 2014 (1st and 2nd) International Biennale of Santorini Island, GR, for the 2013 NextNewCa show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and for the 2014 12th Biennial Sculpture Exhibition, in Bellevue, WA. She has also been awarded artist-in-residences in Post Studio’s Fall 2013 Residency in Sausalito, CA, Root Division in San Francisco (2013-14) CA, Lucid Art Foundation in Inverness (2014) CA, the Studios of Key West (2014), FL, and the Jail Residency, in San Francisco (2015) CA. Skandali has shown both nationally and internationally. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA and on Paros Island, GR.