Yulia Koval: Slow Coast
Dexamenes Seaside Hotel, Peloponnese
20 July – 17 October 2026
Shot on 35mm film
Curated by Nikos Karaflos and Yulia Koval.
This series emerged during an artist residency at Dexamenes, a former wine factory turned into a five-star hotel holding a Michelin Key on the western coast of the Peloponnese. Here industrial architecture meets cultivated land and the Ionian Sea.
Rather than approaching the landscape as something to be represented, the work is rooted in sustained observation of its material transformations.
Working with 35mm film became less an aesthetic decision than a way of slowing down the act of looking. The photographs linger on transitions rather than events, on erosion instead of spectacle, on gestures rather than narratives.
Water, vegetation, weathered concrete, rust and animal presence appear not as isolated subjects but as interconnected fragments of a shared ecology. Each image isolates an ordinary encounter, allowing it to exceed its descriptive function.
Together, the works propose landscape not as scenery, but as a living field of relationships, continuously shaped by weather, labour, and time.
Artist’s short bio
Born in Baku and based in Athens, Yulia Koval is an independent film photographer and visual artist working primarily with 35mm analogue film. Drawn to photography’s ability to physically hold time through chemistry, grain, and light, she approaches image-making with equal parts precision and intuition — informed by her background in engineering and an ongoing interest in slowness as a counterweight to the speed of contemporary visual culture.
Works by Yulia Koval are held in private collections across Greece, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and other countries. Her photography has been featured in publications including Forbes, Cultured, Kathimerini, Athens Voice, Athinorama, LiFo, Andro, Glow, Posh Travel, and Art Flash.
* Exhibition photographs by Giannis Boziaris.
