Sofia Nifora b. 1995 in Patras, Greece | Lives and works in London, UK

Sofia Nifora drinks deep from a well of solace to fuel her wishes and intentions. Personal experiences of grief and migration find form in symbolic representations of what once was and is no more — a newly vivid exploration of how reality is manipulated within our recollections. Her paintings function as metaphors for these memories whilst possessing an autonomy independent of their original subjects. The essence of her imagery lies in the transient and peaceful qualities of nature, specifically focusing on the depiction of untamed grasses and weeds found along the rugged coastlines of her hometown in the Achaia region of Greece. Magnified in epic proportions, fronds bend and whet into an aggregate mindscape and for a moment it is though we can feel the warm dry winds that rustle the leaves and disturb the cicada, heard beyond the sound of the waves. Nifora reaches for abstraction in this fixated figuration, summoning to the canvas a fragmented recreation of that place which exists only in memory. Her own private Ithaca.

Sofia Nifora currently lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2013-19) and École Supérieure d’Art de Clermont Métropole (2016-17) before receiving an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2022. In 2020 and 2021 she was awarded the NEON Organisation Scholarship followed by the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2021. Her work was included in the group show’s ‘Abstraction’ at Taymour Grahne Projects (2023), ‘A New Sensation’ at Galerie Marguo (2023) and ‘Nouvelle Vague’ at LBF Gallery (2023). Her first solo exhibition ‘We too have been there, though we shall land no more’ was held at the ATM Gallery, NYC also in 2023.