Biography

Magdalena Melissourgaki Woźniak is a Polish-Greek visual artist based in Crete whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, mixed media and installation. Moving freely between figurative and abstract languages, she explores human experience through emotion, memory, light and the complex relationship between what is visible and what remains hidden.Rather than building her work around a single stylistic formula, Melissourgaki Woźniak treats medium as a conscious artistic choice. Oil and acrylic painting, charcoal, layered surfaces, photography, found objects, sound, light and spatial installation may all become part of her practice when required by an idea. Across these changing forms, recurring concerns remain visible: human presence and absence, femininity, solitude, vulnerability, freedom, memory, transformation and the emotional power of light.Born and raised in Poland, she received her early artistic education there before moving to Greece. Crete became both her home and an important point of reference for her artistic perception. The intensity and constant transformation of Mediterranean light, together with the island’s extraordinary historical and archaeological continuity, strengthened her interest in time, memory and the traces that people and cultures leave behind.Light occupies a distinctive position within her visual language. Melissourgaki Woźniak approaches it not merely as a formal element but as an emotional instrument capable of altering perception and psychological atmosphere. Light may expose, conceal, isolate or transform. Its intensity and colour become a means of guiding emotion, whether in a figurative composition, a contemplative abstraction or an installation.At the centre of her practice, however, remains the human being.Her work addresses intimate experiences of solitude, identity, emotional tension, memory and the search for freedom, while some projects extend toward broader questions of injustice, violence, aggression, social indifference and responsibility. Female figures recur throughout her work, not as decorative motifs but as carriers of psychological and emotional experience.In her installation practice, painting often becomes only one element of a larger narrative. Objects, photographs, sound, light and constructed environments allow the viewer to enter a work rather than simply observe it. These projects are frequently conceived as emotional spaces in which individual elements gain meaning through their relationship with one another and with the audience.Melissourgaki Woźniak places particular importance on exhibitions as spaces of encounter and dialogue. Solo exhibitions allow her to construct broader narratives in which individual works form parts of a larger emotional and conceptual journey. The response of the audience — conversation, reflection, silence and personal interpretation — remains an important extension of the creative process.Her formal higher artistic education developed during an already mature stage of her practice. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Painting at the Warsaw School of Art and subsequently continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she received her Master’s degree, completing her diploma work in the field of illustration and publishing graphics.Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece and internationally. Particularly significant are her recurring solo exhibitions at the El Greco Museum in Crete, where she has presented conceptually developed bodies of work over several years. Her international exhibition history includes projects in Poland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United States, among them ARTBOX presentations in Miami, Venice, Palma de Mallorca and New York, as well as SwissArtExpo in Zurich. Works by the artist have entered private collections in Europe and the United States.Alongside her studio practice, Melissourgaki Woźniak is actively involved in curatorial and exhibition work in Crete. Her ongoing collaboration with the El Greco Museum includes the organisation and curatorial development of exhibitions, and she is also engaged in artistic organisations and initiatives in both Greece and Poland.Her artistic practice continues to evolve across media, techniques and visual languages. Its coherence does not depend on repetition of a recognisable style, but on a sustained sensitivity to human experience and a persistent search for the form best suited to each idea.For Melissourgaki Woźniak, art is not expected to offer simple answers. Its value lies in its ability to create an encounter — to make the viewer stop, feel, question and perhaps recognise something that until that moment had remained unspoken.

EXHIBITIONS

Aegean Blue 2020, Paros 17-22/07/2020SwissArtExpo, Zurich 20-24/08/2020Corona Virus, World Virtual Museum, 2020Artbox/Project, Barcelona 09/2020Solo exhibition in El Greco Museum, Crete 02-16/06/2019Artbox/ Project, Miami 02-08/12/2019ArtExpoProject, Venice 04/2019SwissArtExpo, Zurich 15-19/08/2019The Journey, Palaiochora- Chania 12-20/05/2019Art in Rome, Art Galerry Rome 29/06-04/07/2019The Folklore Museum, Episkopi 4-12/07/2017Aegean Art International Festival / International exhibition, Episkopi 04-12/07/2016Aegean Art International Festival / International exhibition, Episkopi 04-12/07/2015PUBLICATIONSArt Universal, The Great Encyclopedia of International Art, Italy 2020“The new Art Book 2019” from the Art Freaks Global, Canada 2019XVI Spotlight magazine Circle foundation for the Art, France 2019Outsider art magazine 3, USA 2019AWARDSCircle Quarterly Art Review Magazine Contest-Certificate of Artistic Excellence 2020Artist of the Year Competition 2019-Circle Foundation for the Art-Honorable Mention AwardSemi Finalist by the Jury of the ARTbox project MIAMI 2019 ( MIAMI International Art Week December 2019)The Jurney International Art Competition 2019 ART FLOW GALLERY -Finalist1st Avard for 8 International BIENNALE -The best Art Techer Award 2018 https://creta24.gr/irakleio-mikroi-mathites-vraveytikan-se-diagonismo-technis/?1st PLACE FOR ANIMATIONS 2017-2018 International Competition for School 7 BIENNALE 2016-2017 -1st AWARD- The best art teacher awardUNICEF 2015-2016  3 place for working with Children PosterSILVER MEDAL 2010 EMBASSY OF EGYPT-ATHENS work with children on the subject of Egypt