TEXTS With a playful and cosmopolitan mood, the artist “abandons” symbolically Crete and travels the viewer in Zurich and the adjacent Lake of Constance, located in the trinational point between Switzerland, Germany and Austria. She deals with issues not only of her interest but also with those of timeless interests: buildings and nature. Her desire is to share with the viewer what she is artistically concerned with, drawing him both in the dark and bright aspects of the subject she chooses. By insisting on her artistic idiom, she rejects every descriptive element and focuses on the representation of symbolic architectural sets or landscapes, which she presents mainly through geometric renditions of the form. In her own way, she recreates what drives her interest, and carries it into her pictures, often giving it a different meaning or function . Her multifaceted work she encompasses into three or four levels of plexiglas, among which she places engravings (woodcuts, engravings and cardboard matrices). Pegi Kounelaki Art Historian, writer Hania, 2017 At the heart of Marina Maravellaki’s interest lies urbanity. Not in the sense of its characteristic features, though, but in a purely symbolic nature, often underlined by an intensely critical approach. Her works as a whole typically lay the emphasis on vertical elements and crude geometrical themes. An elevating trend highlights the monument-like properties and sets off the will to prove the everlasting spirit of the buildings portrayed. Her love for sharp and piercing motifs, reminding us of great buildings from times past, together with her dynamic development of geometrical themes give space new meaning as well as a different.function. This re-formation, often accompanied by a series of organic elements woven within the geometrical formats, goes beyond depicting a façade or a simple internal structure and serves as a commentary on the role and function, the everlasting nature and the dynamics of the buildings. A strict geometrical vocabulary and a “loose” rendering of shapes bolster the works’ expressive power, commenting on past and future alike. Equally important are the materials that the artist uses, since they too carry messages of symbolic values and hints. All the while touching upon recycling and the consumption frenzy of contemporary society, the constant squandering of raw materials and its impact on the environment, Marina Maravellaki sensibly avoids flamboyant theoretical statements. She makes use of second-hand aluminium cans, old scraps of paper and decaying wooden doors to practically prove the power of such materials to speak of a truth that she does not want to shout about but hint at and make us think. Thanos Christou Assistant Professor of History of Art, University of Ioannina Athens 2006 Marina Maravelaki keeps a personal diary of images, urban experiences and visions. Behind those images on can detect the artist’s relationship with history which alters the facades of those samples of human arrogance. Buildings characterized by dynamic uplifting with the west-protestant values of society being examined and represented. Marina attempts a difficult journey to the points of view emerging from the relationship of humans to those grand creations – especially architectural – in which the human element can either be extinct or, it can dreams of goals unattainable and grand. Her works penetrate the heavens and transport the observer to higher experiences or, on the other hand, offer him the optics of “detachment” from the urban environment. Other works reconcile the human creation with the observer and project an anthropometric dimension of the organized urban space and others evoke an environment of gothic uplifting. Theoni Scoutra Art History Professor, University of Indianapolis Athens 2004