Sculpture.
Memory made public.

Athens, Greece

Aretaieia

Aretaieia stands at the entrance of Greece’s first university hospital, across Vasilissis Sofias Avenue from the U.S. Embassy. The over-life-size figure honors the hospital’s long tradition of women’s health: gynecological care at Aretaieion dates to 1906, with an independent University Gynecology Clinic established in 1922.

The work marks Petrides’ first use of recycled material: PETG salvaged from medical packaging, chosen for a hospital commission and designed for permanent outdoor installation.

Neo Psychiko, Athens, Greece

Refugee-Woman of Smyrna

Refugee-Woman of Smyrna stands in Neo Psychiko, Athens. The work connects a public place with the artist’s family history and the experience of displacement.

Serifos Island, Greece

Medusa of Serifos

Serifos, in the Cyclades, occupies an important place in ancient Greek mythology: Perseus was sent from the island to bring back Medusa’s head. On his return journey, he rescued Andromeda and brought her back to the island.

Because Serifos has been mined for iron and copper since antiquity, Petrides chose to combine these two metals in a monumental head, installed on a concrete column outside the museum.

Thessaloniki, Greece

Man of Two Wars II

This bust draws inspiration from the lives and suffering of Jewish and non-Jewish Greeks during the 1940s. The larger version, pictured before installation and described below, is committed to the Holocaust Museum of Greece and held pending the museum’s completion. A reduction of the same sculpture is already in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens.

For this piece, Petrides looks to Rodin’s Pierre de Wissant, one of the six figures in The Burghers of Calais: leading citizens who in 1347 offered their lives to spare their town.

London, UK

Court Tennis: Underarm Twist Serve

This tabletop sculpture captures the instant of contact in one of the distinctive strokes of court tennis—also called real tennis or jeu de paume, the medieval indoor racquet game from which lawn tennis descends. The game is played on an enclosed, asymmetric court with sloped penthouse roofs and galleries, and uses a heavy handmade ball with a hand-sewn wool covering.

The work entered the museum collection of the Tennis & Rackets Association, the UK governing body for real tennis and rackets, housed at The Queen’s Club. Founded in 1886, it is one of the sport’s historic venues, known for its annual grass-court tournament preceding Wimbledon.

New York, NY

Head of Thalia II

For the 2023 reopening of The Landmark at 727 Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co., working with Peter Marino, commissioned Petrides to create a work for the Landmark’s contemporary art collection.

Petrides modeled the head in clay, drawing on black-and-white photographs of his mother as a young woman, taken around 1950. The bronze was cast near ancient Thebes and finished in a custom patina developed to echo Tiffany’s signature color.