Venia Bechrakis
Venia Bechrakis is a Greek visual artist who works in Athens and New York City. She was born in Athens and studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She won the Onassis Foundation Scholarship in 2000 and earned an MFA in photography and video art at New York University. She also received the Gerondelis Foundation Grant in 2001 and the Jack Goodman Award for Art & Technology in 2002.
Bechrakis has shown her work in solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including Strange Weathers in Bucharest (2009), Urban Dwellings in Thessaloniki (2008), Within-Without in Athens (2006), and Real Art Ways in Connecticut (2003, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts). She has also participated in many international group shows, such as OpenXII in Venice (2009), Art Basel Miami (2008), and MOCA Shanghai (2008).
Her practice spans photography, painting and video, rooted in performance art. She explores gender, identity and the boundary between private and public life. She is best known for self-portraits in which she places herself in imaginary stories and performs private rituals and traditional female roles, often in a humorous way. In projects like Within-Without and Strange Weathers, she creates paradoxical scenes in public spaces that challenge images from advertising, film and art.
Bechrakis uses imagery that blends performance, documentary photography, painting and cinema. Her work often builds imaginary, sometimes surreal, settings that reference everyday life, centering on the artist while probing autobiography and fiction.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 15:14 (CET).