Hariclia Michailidou

The first light moving through space, ecstatic in the dark, made patterns, golden bright patterns of light, like ripples in water, make patterns, and as if everything loves to turn in a circle, within the cosmic and within the atomic, from turning rapturous round and round stars burst into light lightning up a heaven.

Their light turning around and spreading through heaven from the beginning, made patterns, since the first star.

My work begins just the same way. Twenty-five years ago, I painted watercolor circles that reminded me of light reflections (for a very long I rejoiced contemplating light), and I called them “reflections.” Later, with copies of the watercolor circles, I began to make patterns as collages, at the beginning arbitrarily, and later, when I began to work with a computer, I understood I was following the same order nature makes patterns. Later, by grouping them together, I created a series I called “interludes.” Then later I projected a multitude of them on my computer screen, and I started to play by compressing them to the maximum and then expanding them, suddenly some of those patterns lit up like stars and galaxies in the night sky. I knew then that what I was seeing was cosmic, it was the universe. One image was very much like the image of the very deep space taken by the Hubble telescope, I called that series “cosmic nights”.

That was the beginning of a twenty year voyage into space, I blew up stars and created supernova, I merged galaxies together at will, and later I started to modify cosmic visions, stretching them, rendering them plastic and sculpting them, warping them in magnificent ways, I created an extensive number of series and named them according to my understanding like; poetics of space, cosmic phenomena, cosmic encounters, cosmic metamorphosis, cosmic goddesses, on the plasticity of the universe, cosmic splendors, into the universe, cosmic realms, cosmic abstractions, just to name a few. Sometimes I will see images taken by telescopes that remind me of images of my work, and I will post them side by side on public media under art versus science.

Recently, someone told me that my latest images reminded him of Laniakea. I didn’t know what that was, so he showed me on Google images of Laniakea, it is the super cluster where our galaxy is located, and there was truly a resemblance. I was amazed, often I felt I was lost in space, lost in the universe, and not knowing where, not that it truly mattered, and now I couldn’t believe how far my work took me, imagine as far as Laniakea.., unbelievable astronomical distances, to believe that in my images was made possible, is beyond my mind to grasp.

I am very thankful to the universe, to the whole of heaven, for those priceless unexpected gifts. I am thankful for the extraordinary, the exhilarating, the enthralling experience I had, and I hope to continue it for myself and for others.