Alexandra Christou's Female Gaze at The Breeder, Athens

The Breeder in Athens presents a two-part exhibition of Alexandra Christou (1950-2009), bringing together erotic works from the mid-1990s and portraits of sex workers and neighborhood women from the late 1980s and 1990s. Christou's paintings depict female desire from within, avoiding the male gaze, with spare compositions on raw linen and economical lines. Works like 'Untitled (In Love under shower)' (1996) and 'Untitled (In Love Holding on)' (1996) show bodies pressing together with urgency. Her street portraits, featuring women in central Athens—outside hotels, under lightbulbs, leaning against cars—claim space for female existence in the public sphere without moralizing or romanticizing. Christou's approach, described by writer Hartmut Wickert as 'secondary authorship,' allows the image to emerge through her. A marginal note reads: 'I wanted to remember, but the body came first.' The exhibition runs at The Breeder, Athens.