Encountering: Io Palmer, Pavlina Vagioni
& Anna Tsouhlarakis
March 1 - April 12, 2025
Artist Talk with Anna Tsouhlarakis: Friday, February 28 from 4 PM Working Men's Institute, 407 Tavern Street, New Harmony, IN
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Southern Indiana proudly presents Encountering: a three-person exhibition reflecting on themes of cross-cultural trade, exchange and diasporas. With an opening reception on Saturday, March 1st from 3-5 PM CT, The exhibit features works by Io Palmer, Pavlina Vagioni and Anna Tsouhlarakis, Encountering explores intersectional identities and cross-cultural frameworks over time: both themes concomitant with the overlapping histories comprising present-day New Harmony, Indiana. Works on view encompass sculpture, collage, assemblage and non-traditional art materials, foregrounding the ways in which approaches to material culture shift over time. Encountering offers timeless yet interconnected perspectives on identity, investigating both the tensions and possibilities existing at global crossroads and the complexities that necessarily result.
From the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean to the global trade networks existing today, commerce and cross-cultural exchange have always offered opportunities for economic growth and the global transmission of knowledge. Cross-cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean spanned civilizations across the Near East, Africa, and Europe, continuing onward to East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The volume of trade and complexity of trade routes such as Persia’s Royal Road – later transforming in part to become the Silk Road – presaged today’s international trade systems. In 2020, scholars participating in the Archaeological Institute of America webinar, ‘Teaching Race and Material Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean,’ reflected on the nuances of identifying civilizations such as ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt held intersecting identities as both an African civilization and a Mediterranean one. The ancient Mediterranean as a region also served as a microcosm of complex notions of identity and diaspora common today, with panelist Bet Hucks remarking, “third culture kids existed even in the ancient Med.”(1) Where exchange of goods and ideas was most active, complex notions of identity necessarily arose: impacting the aesthetic of the resulting material culture. From Io Palmer’s enticingly textural mixed-media sculpture to the genre-bending conceptual practice of artist Anna Tsouhlarakis to Pavlina Vagioni’s multi-media, site-specific investigations into topography and the subconscious, Encountering asks how the desire for goods has led to a multi-cultural materiality informed by diasporas and intersectionality: forces that exist today with as tenacious a hold as they exerted in ancient times.
About Anna Tsouhlarakis
Tsouhlarakis has had work shown in national and international exhibitions at venues such as NEON Foundation in Athens, Greece; White Frame in Basel, Switzerland; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; the National Museum of the American Indian; the National Portrait Gallery; and a recent solo exhibition at MCA Denver. In May 2024, she had a solo presentation with the Tilton Gallery at the Independent Art Fair in New York. Tsouhlarakis has participated in various art residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, MacDowell, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at Colorado College for the 2019-2020 academic year. She was awarded a Creative Capital Grant in 2021, a 2022 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and she recently completed a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.
IG | @annatskis
About Pavlina Vagioni
Pavlina Vagioni is a Greek-born multimedia artist whose kaleidoscopic practice spans sculpture, painting,
sound, and digital art. She holds a Master’s from the Athens School of Fine Arts, GR. Vagioni explores archetypal symbolism and classical mythological themes in her work. She has exhibited at venues ranging from the Byzantine & Christian Museum, the Hellenic American Union in Athens, and the Lawndale Art Center in Houston. Her solo exhibitions include Kappatos Gallery (Athens, Greece), TANK Space (Houston, TX), Carillon Gallery (Ft Worth, TX), and the Opening Gallery (New York, NY) and she has completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York and a public art project at the ION Building in Houston.
IG | @pavlinavagioni
About Io Palmer
Palmer’s work has been included in the Dakar-International Arts Biennial, Dakar Senegal; York College, CUNY, Jamaica, NY; Rush Gallery, New York, NY and the Boise Art Museum. She received a Fulbright Nehru Research Grant to India, 2019, a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant, 2021 and an Artist Trust Fellowship, 2023. She recently received her first large scale public art commission: a permanent installation at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, Tucson and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Io is Professor of Art at Washington State University, Pullman.
IG | @io.palmer
(1)Nakassis, Dimitri et al. “Webinar 2: Teaching Race And Material Culture In The Ancient Mediterranean.” Archaeology TV YouTube. Accessed December 5, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9b2sf7BGeE.
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art at University of Southern Indiana promotes discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region. New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art is a proud outreach partner of the University of Southern Indiana
This exhibition is made possible in part Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana, and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.