Bio
Linda Eva Kourkoulis is an artist, educator, and researcher. Born in New York City, she earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, studied at the Art Students League, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Linda maintains her printmaking studio and practice in New York.
Artist Statement
My current prints and sculptures are part of a project that began with a poem, “The Container of the Uncontainable” by George Seferis. The title refers to Mary as mother of the infinite and therefore uncontainable deity. Yet, the capacity to carry life within her body, that which cannot otherwise be contained, describes woman as conceiver and creator of life, rather than a passive, physical conduit. Motherhood generally possesses a certain status, whereas pregnancy and the act of giving birth occupy a position in Western society that is in varying degrees, politicized, discriminatory, exploited, and abjectified. Reading the poem in its original Greek, the word ‘χώρα’ translated into English as container might also be understood as land or country, thereby associating mother with the earth, and aligning more closely to Indigenous philosophies and diverse ways of knowing. In fact, a later line in the poem also contains the word ‘χώρα’ where it is translated as space. This revisualization of the mother of god, from bounded to boundless space, creates a shift towards or even restoration of a holistic nature and faith as a way of life. Indigenous cultures around the world know the interconnections in the natural world and the cosmos through lived experience and the spiritual as part of the continuity of life.
These prints and sculptural pieces play with the sensibility of the female body as both desirable and formidable, being embodied and embedded in experience with agency, power, and purpose. Spatial depictions in two and three dimensional representations are delineated by natural organisms in a variety of compositions with consideration given to natural networks of connectivity, light, and power. I study marine creatures and the natural containers they create such as shells- enclosures made to house, protect, be occupied and abandoned by fate or design- as models for assembling pseudo communities, perpetuating in colonies and on artifact-like fragments to imply disintegration and renewal on a biological continuum.
Exhibitions
2025 Small Works Show: Microcosm, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY
2024 Community Art Benefit, KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY
PaperWorks Show: No Limits, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY
Every Picture Tells a Story, Silvermine Gallery, New Canaan, CT
Enduring: Small Works Show, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY
2023 Pushing the Envelope, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY
Sixty Square Inches XX, Purdue Galleries, Purdue University, IN
Small Works: Personal Search, juried exhibit, Upstream Gallery, Hastings on Hudson, NY
2022 New Members Exhibition, Silvermine Gallery, 1037 Silvermine Rd, New Canaan, CT
Guild Summer Salon, Silvermine Gallery, New Canaan, CT
2021 She is Rising, Art Benefit by LiveGirl, Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
Annual Members Show, Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT
Guild Summer Salon, Silvermine Gallery, 1037 Silvermine Rd, New Canaan, CT
2020 Faculty Biennial 2020, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, New York, NY
2019 Friends of Pleiades Annual Invitational Show, Pleiades Gallery, New York, NY
Coming Home: Alumni Exhibition, juried exhibition, Macy Gallery,
Fluid Perimeters: Myers Art Prizes, juror: Jennifer Mock, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, New York
2018 Small Works Show, Invitational Exhibition, Pleiades Gallery, New York, NY
2014 Both Sides Now, Faculty Exhibition, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, New York
2013 Equilibrium, Myers Art Prize Exhibition, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, NY
2012 Size Matters, NRCA Annual Juried Exhibition, Rotunda Gallery, New Rochelle, NY
2011 Subtitled, curated by Maurizio Pellegrin, 251 E. 110th Street, New York, NY
2010 Media Loft +, ArtsFest 2010, Media Loft Gallery, New Rochelle, NY
Studio Practices, juried exhibition curated by G. Sullivan, Macy Gallery, NY
2009 Myers Art Prize Exhibition, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, New York
2008 Myers Art Prize Exhibition, Macy Gallery, Teachers College, New York
2007 Ceramics, Printmaking and Photography Exhibition, Macy Gallery, NY
2006 Nature’s Motion, Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY
Westchester Biennial 2006, Castle Gallery, New Rochelle, NY
2005 Printing Show: Lithography & Silkscreen, Macy Gallery, Teachers College
Macy 55, Macy Gallery, Teachers College curated by Maurizio Pellegrin
2004 Dimokritos Gallery, Athens Greece*
2003 Group Exhibition, Dimokritos Gallery, Athens, Greece
2002 Dimokritos Gallery, Athens Greece*
2000 Group Exhibition, Ernest Schiller Gallery, Salamina, Greece
1999-2000 Theognis Gallery, Megara, Bougainvillia Gallery, Mykonos, Matoyiannia Center,
Mykonos, Pierides Gallery, Athens*; Lembesi Exhibition Hall, Salamina; Kalikourthi Gallery, Aegina,
Greece; exhibitions sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Culture: curated by M. Eleftheriou
1998 Ernest Schiller Gallery, Salamina, Greece*
Bougainvillia Gallery, Mykonos, Greece
1994 El Rio Del Tiempo mural, Guadalajara Book Fair, Mexico
Day of the Dead, group show, Carole LaRoche Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
*denotes solo exhibition
Awards
Myers Fund Art Prize, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY: 2008, 2009, 2013, 2018