Xenia Papadopoulou is a visual artist and a poet. She holds an MA in Fine Arts by the Athens School of Fine Arts and she has completed studies in Art Conservation (BA TEI Athens/MSc Gothenburg University), Photography (Valand Academy of Art and Design, Gothenburg University), Visual Communication (Malmö University) and Scandinavian Art History (Uppsala University).

Papadopoulou is a storyteller. Starting from her own, personal experiences, she tells stories about the body –with certain attention to the female one- in the field between desire and power relations.

While working across various media, her late focus is on sewn fabric. She uses unbleached, natural fabric as the substrate of her stories, a material inextricably related to clothing and the human body. Then, with sewing and embroidery, she ‘writes’, like she would do with black pen on paper. Papadopoulou has developed her own sewing idiom, by sewing big surfaces of fabric from top to bottom in a boustrophedon way. Her images develop gradually, often in a cryptic way, like shadows behind a paravan or a Japanese shoji.

There are two important aspects in Papadopoulou’s practice. The one is the constant juxtaposition of the contemporary to the historical body. Having worked for the biggest part of her life with art conservation in major cultural institutions all around the world, Papadopoulou has learned that to understand and even change contemporary conditions, one has to have a profound knowledge of the past. This is the only way for historical narratives and social constructions to critically be questioned. The other aspect is the concept of time wear. The artist is embracing with great tenderness and affection the way time affects all kinds of beings and objects. As a result, her works -and since she is creating anew- always try to substitute weariness with some kind of imperfection or randomness. Her method is that of a healer, taking into account the thorough history of an entity and then proposing more or less radical ways for future transformations.

Selected recent exhibitions include: Paper Positions, Berlin, Tempelhof (2025), Cabinets of Curiosities, MOMus Alex Mylona (2025), Olive disc, 35 wall sculptures (commission for Phaea Blue, Crete) (2025), Art Athina, represented by Crux Gallery (2024), Paxos Biennial (2024).

As a poet, Papadopoulou issued in 2015 her first poetry book, 'The call of the pheasant', being nominated for the Reader's poetry prize and being translated in German and Spanish.