Zoumboulakis Gallery presents Sofia Rozaki’ s solo exhibition, titled “that’s what she said”, from February 13 to March 15, 2025, curated by Eleni Michaelidi.
According to the curator: “Titled “that’s what she said”, the exhibition appropriates a common punchline with a supposedly unintended humorous double entendre: a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, while the other suggests an underlying message with sexual connotations. This sexist cliché negative speech act is reappropriated by the artist as a badge of honor – an open call to forge and render visible non-traditional feminist kinships and relationships.
Evolving her characteristic mixed media painterly style, Rozaki emerges as a great, idiosyncratic talent amongst the artists of her generation. In her figurative compositions, she strikes a masterly balance between queer formalism and surrealism. Ample details of everyday life gestures, objects and spaces, pop culture and art historical references, and recurring archetypal feminist iconographic elements, are combined with ample cuteness, the occasional digital glitch, and (sub)conscious thoughts, fears and desires. A daring iconography that fully exposes the paradoxes of contemporary life, in between liberal pleasure and neoliberal subordination.
Rozaki’ s work holds space for these inescapable complications of unconventional living. In rendering new kinds of intimacy visible, it engages with processes of radical world making. Balancing between established everyday habits and aspirations for alternative reciprocities that defy heteronormative patriarchal norms, this new body of work unfolds as “experiments in imagining otherwise” (Lola Olufemi) – a series of experiments in non-binary visual praxis”.
Short biographical note
Sofia Rozaki (b. 1990) studied painting at the School of Visual and Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She currently lives and works in Athens. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including Art Athina, Art Thessaloniki, the Rome International Art Fair, the Trento Art Festival, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Queer Archive Festival,MOMus–Experimental Center for the Arts and the National Archaeological Museum Cafe
In her practice, she explores alternative narratives surrounding the body, gender, memory, trauma and sexuality. Through hybrid figures and compositions that blur the line between the real and the surreal, her works challenge dominant Western binaries.
With a feminist and queer approach, Rozaki combines personal and collective experiences with a wide range of aesthetic references, crafting a vulnerably sincere and idiosyncratic visual language.
