This week we welcome Anna Samara, a Greek visual artist based in New York City. Working primarily in oil painting, her practice draws from scientific and archival imagery to examine systems of observation and representation. Her work reflects on the psychological and political dynamics of visibility, particularly the tension between observer and observed in an age shaped by surveillance and screen culture.
Samara studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece in 2021 and moved to New York after receiving a scholarship to pursue graduate studies, earning her MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2024. She recently completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2025. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including in New York City, Amsterdam, Belgrade and Athens, with shows at The Opening Gallery, Gallerie Bart, U10 Art Space and Crux Galerie.
“Drawing from scientific sources and technologies such as thermal imaging and photography, I aim to bring new questions with respect to the politics of representation within traditional media. The scenes depicted in the paintings come from a range of different sources; nature & ecology documentaries, pop culture, museum archives, internet archives, as well as imagined subjects. The composition of the paintings — sometimes overlapping one another, sometimes spaced apart — creates a psychological interface which highlights the reciprocal relationship between the one who sees and the one who is being seen. The depiction of the dynamic relationship of ‘predator and prey’ operates as a way to think further of what it means to observe and be observed, and the complexities that this bears in the age of social media and the constant surveillance of the self.”
