Irini Karayannopoulou is a multidisciplinary artist whose work engages with the poetics of image-making across painting, collage, film, and independent publishing. Drawing upon appropriation and reassembly, her work navigates representation and abstraction, authorship and anonymity. Educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne and later at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, Karayannopoulou situates her practice within full speed experimentation, painting and archival intervention.
Her expansive body of work encompasses media ranging from large-scale wall drawings to experimental film and artist editions, reflecting a persistent inquiry into systems of desire, narrative, and cultural memory. She is the editor of Janus Femzine, a publication dedicated to contemporary erotica and poetry and the co-founder of both the Extra-Conjugale art collective and Twin Automat films. Their recent film Avaton, is a creative documentary exploring the mystique and exclusionary history of Mount Athos.
Karayannopoulou’s work has been featured in Vitamin C: Contemporary Collage by Phaidon, Pavilionesque by Paulina Olowska, Vogue, Usta Magazine, and the Journal of the Hydra Book Club, and is part of notable collections including Deutsche Bank, Thessaloniki Museum of Contemporary Art, Zepos Yannopoulos, Florika Kyriakopoulou, Renos Xippas, and the Dakis Joannou Collection. She is the author of several artist books, including You Am I, Les Poétiques Anonymes, My Room Too, (created in collaboration with Cube Art Editions) and Elixsir (created in collaboration with Una Boccata d’Arte, Fondazione Elpis and Galleria Continua). She has recently participated at the Mykonos Biennial and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival both as an artist with her work Fire and as a member of the jury for the Film Forward Section Award.
She has completed numerous art residencies such as Schloss Scheibenhardt, Karlsruhe, Germany, Club House Bebek - Istanbul '74, Turkey, Pascale Cottard-Olsson Stockholm, Sweden and more. Her exhibition history includes institutions and platforms such as MoMA Warsaw, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the DESTE Foundation, Art Athina, Pulse Miami, Liste Basel, the Benaki Museum and the Museum of the University of Warsaw. In addition to her artistic production, Karayannopoulou is active as a curator, having organized exhibitions such as Anatomia Humana I & II (2025) with Blackbird Rook in London, and Magic Mirror (2024), on Hydra island.
She is currently participating in Passage du Commerce, a group exhibition at the Kunsthalle Winterthur in Switzerland and with Maia Muller gallery in Paris.