A chance mishap during firing and Theodora Chorafas’ forms, up to then geometrical and planned, get distorted through overheating. That’s the opportunity for the artist to test the strength and potential of her material and to overcome her own challenges and fears. In her artworks, she attempts to achieve a borderline balanced condition, as fine and fragile as it can be without losing its cohesion. At the same time, she bridges the visible and the invisible, the conscious and the subconscious, the material and the spiritual. Chorafas’ work is marked by a pure and frugal form, an economy of expression. She does not succumb to what is commonly considered today aesthetically beautiful; she does not glamorize, or try to cajole us, to flatter us. On the contrary, it is bare, nothing is superfluous – everything serves a purpose.
As the artist states: “Often, at the outset, I set down rules. I keep to them as long as they are useful to the evolution of my forms. But it sometimes happens that these rules lead me to a dead-end, confining me into a barren system. That’s when I must breach these rules, devise new ones and reactivate the creative process.”
