The body of work exhibited explores the relationship between a chaotic urban world and the dreamy metaphysical. Overwhelmed by this turmoil, Ellie Rokkas derives inspiration from hybrid elements, specifically those of mermaids. A city of contrasting disorder is juxtaposed against the symbol of the hybrid mermaid. The city is represented as a series of adjoined squares of various sizes and illustrates an attempt of creating boundaries of interior and exterior space interchangeably. Features of her work include: strips of film showing cryptic images of surgical equipment, profile faces repeated cyclically around the outline of the trees, and mermaids’ lungs after exposure to the city. Finally, it is suggested that time has impaired the ability to fully recollect, and as a result, creativity replaces memory gaps allowing for room to fabricate new meaning.

Ellie Rokkas is a young, upcoming Greek-American artist born in St. Louis, Missouri. She preoccupied herself with the fine arts while attending Wheaton College in Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 2010. Subsequently, she moved on to intensively study fashion design at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York. At the same time, she experimented with painting. Upon moving to Athens in 2012 she attended art lessons from Alkistis Michaelidou and printmaking classes from Evi Athanasiou. In her work she has explored ideas regarding abstract modern art, as well as symbolization. She is currently living and working in Athens, Greece.