Eleni Mylonas, a multidisciplinary artist based between New York and Athens, has long been a vital figure in the international art scene. A Fulbright scholar, she holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a degree in photography from the University of London. Over the decades, she has exhibited at prestigious institutions including MoMA PS1 in New York, the Benaki Museum in Athens, and the Francoise Heitsch Gallery in Munich, among many others. Her practice has consistently moved across media—painting, photography, performance, and video—always with a sharp sensitivity to the urgencies of the present.

Her awarded work, SeaMonster II, expands on her ongoing SeaMonster series, begun with SeaMonster Monk (Athens Art Fair 2019; WhiteBox NYC 2023). This body of work is deeply rooted in the landscape of Aegina, the Greek island where Mylonas maintains her studio. Objects collected along the shoreline—discarded nets, fragments of plastic, remnants of human consumption—are reimagined as ritualistic elements in her performance. What others might dismiss as waste, Mylonas transforms into both testimony and metaphor: a meditation on environmental destruction and an invocation of resilience.

In SeaMonster II, performance, installation, and ecological consciousness merge. The artist stages a confrontation between the beauty and violence of the sea, presenting debris as relics of our collective indifference but also as tools of rebirth. Through this transformation, Mylonas constructs a work that is both intimate and universal, speaking to urgent global concerns while grounded in the physical reality of her own environment.

Her recognition with the award for Best Video Art & Experimental underscores the power of experimental practice to capture the contradictions of our age: fragility and resilience, destruction and renewal, despair and ritual.