PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS
118th ANNUAL
STUDENT EXHIBITION
As an emerging female artist, my personal research revolves around contemporary figurative work that is aesthetically rooted in ancient Greek vase painting, which idolized timeless beauty through the perfection of human form and perceptual idealism. Perfection, in ancient Greece, rested in those who attained the ideal balance of mind and body. These figures were regarded as divinely gifted and became a prototype for mortality.
Drawing from recent personal medical experiences, I decided to explore the relationship of mind and body under the influence of a traumatic experience to understand how these entities interact with each other and determine how they forge identity. This struggling body is meant to challenge the aesthetics of idealism and the conventional norms of beauty by projecting an interpretation of a fragile physical and mental interior masked with the opposing youthful and inherently strong, beautiful, unscarred exterior to convey the illusion of appearance. The gestures of various figures interacting represent physical and mental ideas of myself creating a narrative of struggle and denial of a broken self-esteem, moments of struggle of rebuilding, and the acceptance of the rebirth of a new self. Drawing has always been my preferred medium for it affords a different type of freedom in terms of scale and allows for interesting elongations to occur during the creative process.
My most recent work is a conglomeration of three styles of artwork: collage, printmaking, and charcoal drawing. Collage allows me to explore the physicality of layering various materials to create a three-dimensional textured surface, delineate a perimeter that breaks outside of the classic rectangle, and expand in scale. Printmaking serves as a unifying language that conceals the figures and speaks on inner and external identity. Charcoal and pastel is ideally suited to my approach due to their transient physicality, reflecting motion, change, and impermanent transformation; there is a sense of history within this medium, remembering every mark, erasure, overlap, and blur.
"118th Annual Student Exhibition" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Gallery
(May 10 - June 2, 2019)
https://www.pafa.org/museum/exhibitions/118th-annual-student-exhibition
The Mind-Body Problem:
“Who is in Control?”
“I have chosen to explore the temple of self by iconizing an imperfect body, thus, challenging the aesthetics of idealism and the norms of what society holds as conventionally beautiful.”
Chrysanthe Maggidis
In her MFA thesis, The Mind-Body Problem: “Who is in Control?", Chrysanthe Maggidis investigates the complex relationship between the physical body and the mind through philosophical inquiry, personal experience, and the representation of the human figure in art. At the center of the research is the question of whether mind and body function as separate entities or as interconnected forces that continually shape one another.
The thesis developed partly from Maggidis’s experience of physical injury, surgery, immobility, and rehabilitation. The temporary loss of bodily control exposed a tension between consciousness and physical agency: while the mind remained active and self-aware, the body could become inaccessible, unreliable, or transformed. This disruption profoundly affected her perception of identity, beauty, self-worth, and the relationship between the body she inhabited and the body she perceived in the mirror. It also led her to examine how bodies that depart from conventional ideals become subject to social judgment, the gaze, and culturally constructed notions of normality and beauty.
Drawing on theories of Cartesian dualism, the mind-body problem, Gestalt perception, consciousness, and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Maggidis ultimately considers the mind and body not as entirely separate entities, but as continuously interacting forces. Physical experience informs consciousness, while thought, memory, emotion, and perception shape the way the body is experienced and understood.
These ideas are translated into her figurative practice, in which the physical and psychological self are represented as interconnected presences. Figures overlap, interact, fragment, and occupy the same physical and psychological space, transforming the human body from an anatomical subject into a site where memory, identity, trauma, perception, and consciousness intersect.
Ancient Greek art, particularly Greek vase painting, provides an important aesthetic and conceptual foundation for this exploration. Maggidis draws from the economy of line and contour in black-figure painting, the movement, overlapping forms, and spatial depth of red-figure painting, and the translucent colour and expressive possibilities of white-ground techniques. Charcoal became particularly significant within her practice because its capacity for marking, erasing, blurring, and layering reflects the transient nature of bodily and psychological experience.
The thesis also examines the tension between idealism and the sublime. Classical ideals of proportion, symmetry, balance, and beauty are contrasted with the disrupted, imperfect, and psychologically charged body. Rather than presenting the body as a stable or idealized object, Maggidis uses distortion, fragmentation, vulnerability, and uncertainty to explore experiences that cannot be fully communicated through physical appearance alone.
Ultimately, The Mind-Body Problem: “Who is in Control?” argues for an ongoing interaction between the physical and nonphysical dimensions of human existence. The body is vulnerable to change, limitation, and transformation, while the mind remains perceptive, imaginative, and capable of transcending physical experience. For Maggidis, the artwork becomes a space in which this exchange can be made visible: the physical figure becomes a manifestation of psychological experience, while the intangible aspects of identity, memory, and consciousness acquire physical form.
