Duet at WSA: Maja Djordjevic & Ioanna Pantazopoulou
Dio Horia is pleased to present a two—person exhibition featuring Ioanna Pantazopoulou and Maja Djordjevic at WSA, a newly renovated arts venue in downtown Manhattan. The presentation is part of the special curatorial project ‘Duet’ led by Zoe Lukov and Kyle DeWoody, timed to coincide with The Armory Show and New York Art Week.
Greek artist Ioanna Pantazopoulou presents a sculptural installation composed of a suspended hammock and wall—mounted tamata—handmade votive offerings crafted from recycled aluminum cans. Traditionally used in Greek Orthodox rituals to request divine help, these tamata are reimagined for the contemporary psyche: one protects a mobile phone, another defends free speech, another seeks to save a female coconut from extinction. Playful yet poignant, Pantazopoulou's charms embody the contradictions of modern life, where tech, nature, and identity all require protection. Pantazopoulou is known for transforming expired, found, or discarded materials—rugs, chewing gum, banknotes—into large—scale sculptural installations. Her work challenges ideas of value, space, and sustainability, creating immersive environments that suggest both fairytales and ruins.
At the same time, London-based Serbian artist Maja Djordjevic presents two new paintings from her new series of work called ‘Backrooms’, marking a significant evolution in her artistic practice. Renowned for her pixelated figures and digital-expressionist aesthetic, Djordjevic now shifts focus from the body to space—rendering surreal, emotionally charged interiors inspired by the internet mythology of "backrooms": endless, uncanny office-like environments that feel both banal and disorienting. In these new works, any human traces have disappeared, but their psychological imprint remains.
Through her signature pixelated brushwork, Djordjevic constructs dreamlike interiors pulsing with symbolic tension and emotional residue. These spaces feel flattened and eerily familiar—less designed by architecture than by mood, memory, and absence. Backrooms reflects a deepening introspection in her work, where the digital realm becomes a vessel for meditations on isolation, repetition, and disembodiment.
In response to the curators' call to explore the tension and intimacy of the "duet," Ioanna Pantazopoulou and Maja Djordjevic form a pairing that plays on contrast and resonance—two voices in harmony and dissonance. Pantazopoulou's sculptural installation reinterprets the sacred ritual of tamata through contemporary anxieties—environmental collapse, speech suppression, digital dependency—transforming devotional acts into playful yet urgent appeals for protection. Her work is tactile, handmade, and symbolic, foregrounding material transformation and the vulnerability of belief. Djordjevic, by contrast, moves into the immaterial and psychological: her Backrooms paintings depict sterile, surreal interiors where human presence has evaporated. These flattened, dreamlike digital spaces suggest emotional voids—symbols of detachment, routine, and the eerie texture of internet life. Where Pantazopoulou invokes a world filled with charms, offerings, and rituals, Djordjevic presents a space after the ritual has faded.
