Vicky Tsalamata, an Athens-based artist and Professor Emeritus of Printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts, works at the crossroads of printmaking, mixed media, and philosophical inquiry. Her art probes the boundaries between ethics, politics, and personal responsibility. Over the years, she has turned her practice into a form of reflection and resistance—a way to face the noise and numbness of modern society. For Tsalamata, creating art is not about decoration but conversation. Her images speak to the uneasy relationship between silence and defiance, between the fragility of individuals and the structures that govern them. Beneath the surfaces of her works lie traces of irony, protest, and an unwavering commitment to truth. Through color, texture, and light, she builds a visual language that exposes the moral suffocation of our time while inviting us to search for clarity and breath.
Life Is Getting Increasingly Toxic, Can We Breathe???
From 2011 to 2015, amid one of Greece’s most difficult chapters, Tsalamata created Life Is Getting Increasingly Toxic, Can We Breathe???—a visceral series born from the tension between despair and endurance. These works came out of a period defined by austerity, unemployment, and the collapse of public trust. The air, both literally and symbolically, had become heavy. Tsalamata transformed that sense of suffocation into visual form, asking a question that transcended national borders: when corruption and injustice fill the air, can anyone truly breathe?
Here, breath becomes more than a biological function—it stands for justice, dignity, and survival. Each print feels like an inhale and exhale caught between resistance and exhaustion. The repeated question “Can we breathe?” functions as both lament and declaration. Through layered inks, dense textures, and muted tones, Tsalamata renders the invisible visible—the moral pollution that seeps into daily life.
These pieces are not passive reflections of hardship; they are acts of defiance. The crisis she depicts is not confined to economics—it is an erosion of values, an unmasking of moral decay. For Tsalamata, to create during such times is to reclaim oxygen, to demand space for truth when society is choking on lies.
When exhibited abroad—in Portugal at the Douro Global Print International Exhibition (Bragança, 2017) and at the Douro International Print Biennial (Miguel Torga Museum, 2018)—the series struck a deep chord. The question “Can we breathe?” resonated in countries facing their own social and political turmoil. What began as a reflection on Greece became a mirror for global unease.
The series speaks with quiet intensity. It does not shout; it presses, constricts, then releases. Each work holds an unsettling beauty—grace and toxicity coexisting within the same frame. In this delicate balance, Tsalamata reveals her deeper intent: to make art not as ornament, but as consciousness.
Life Is Wildly Unpredictable, Can We Talk About It?
Between 2010 and 2012, just before the “toxic” series, Tsalamata created Life Is Wildly Unpredictable, Can We Talk About It?—a body of work that foresees the instability to come. Greece was entering the early stages of its political and economic unraveling, and uncertainty had already begun to define daily existence. The title, both casual and disarming, conceals a deep unease: it invites dialogue in a time when honest conversation was becoming rare.
These works explore disorientation—the sense of standing on shifting ground. Through printmaking, Tsalamata captures the visual rhythm of chaos: layered, fractured surfaces, a dialogue between fragility and persistence. Forms seem to hover between collapse and balance, evoking the psychological vertigo of crisis. Urban decay, voids, and abrupt contrasts in tone reflect a society where safety, trust, and meaning have eroded.
The artist places us inside this turmoil, face-to-face with both victims and perpetrators. The “next-door presences” she refers to—the displaced, the marginalized, and the corrupt—are never abstract. They share the same proximity, part of a single unstable system.
The series traveled widely, presented at international exhibitions such as the Print Triennial Network in Krakow-Wien (Austria, 2013), Krakow-Istanbul (Turkey, 2013), Krakow-Falun (Sweden, 2013), and later Global Print in Coimbra (2015) and the Douro International Print Biennial in Bragança (2016). Audiences across continents recognized in her work a shared anxiety—the unpredictability that has come to define contemporary life.
Yet Tsalamata’s approach remains grounded in endurance, not despair. Her printmaking process—slow, repetitive, layered—embodies persistence itself. Each impression, each mark, is a record of patience and will. Even as her subjects navigate uncertainty, the act of creation reaffirms the possibility of resilience.
Between Breath and Dialogue
Taken together, Tsalamata’s two series form a conversation about survival. Breathing and talking—two simple, human acts—become metaphors for existence under pressure. When either is stifled, art becomes the way back to them. Her work calls for awareness, for the courage to speak and to breathe amid toxicity and unpredictability.
Vicky Tsalamata’s art does not offer solutions—it offers recognition. In confronting decay, she creates space for renewal. Through her layered prints, she gives voice to what so many feel but cannot express: that amid chaos and corruption, the smallest acts—breathing, speaking, creating—remain our most profound forms of resistance.
