contact : sophia.dona@gmail.com | +49 17685294049 | @sofia_dona_
Sofia Dona is a visual artist and architect based in Athens and Munich. Her work
moves across video installations, film, and site-specific practices. Her
interdisciplinary approach focuses on interruptions—sudden breaks in historical
narratives or everyday life that expose hidden mechanisms of power and control.
Viewed through a queer lens, these moments challenge normative ideas of
space, identity, and belonging, often highlighting the experiences of those
pushed to the margins. Moving between documentary and fictional approaches,
her work constructs layered narratives that question dominant histories and
propose alternative ways of seeing and inhabiting the world.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Bauhaus
Foundation Dessau (Gropius House), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Instituto Municipal
de Arte y Cultura, Tijuana, nGbK (Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst), Berlin,
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, and the National Museum of
Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens. Her films have premiered at festivals such as
the Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival and the Images Festival, Toronto.
Her forthcoming work includes participation in the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of
Contemporary Art (May 2026) and the Public Art München Focus Year 2026.
She is a member of the queer-feminist film collective Nionia Films and the
Errands art collective.
She is a recipient of the ARTWORKS Grant (2025) and was a fellow at Onassis
AiR (2023). She has also been awarded the City of Munich Prize for Architecture
(2018), a Fulbright Scholarship (Los Angeles, 2016), and the SADAS Award for
Young Architects (2010), together with Dimitris Theodoropoulos.
landscape design of the Christian Doppler Klinik in Salzburg (2021), completed in
2025. She has also worked in stage design, collaborating with directors such as
Dimitris Papaioannou and Athina Rachel Tsangari.
Her curatorial work encompasses exhibitions, festivals, and research-based
projects. As a member of Nionia Films, she has contributed to projects such as
Outraged by Pleasure and the screening program She, They, He Wanted Green
Lawns* (Athens, 2023). She co-curated the Aphrodite Queer-Feminist Film
Festival (Athens, 2018–2020), together with AMOQA, Sofia Bempeza, Maria F.
Dolores, Persephone Kerentzi, and Vassiliea Stylianidou (Franck-Lee Alli-Tis).
Other curatorial projects include Akinito/Akinhto (Athens Biennale, 2016); Enjoy
(Y)our State of Emergency: Art and Activist Strategies in Times of Crisis (nGbK,
Berlin, 2014); New Babylon Revisited (Athens, 2015); On Board, Charter 2013
(Marseille–Athens, Goethe-Institut Athen); and Austausch/Exchange (Athens,
2012).
As a member of Errands group she has contributed to projects such as Mystery
142: Oh So Now Eleusis Is Growing Wheat (Eleusis Cultural Capital, 2023) and
Epicurean Garden (Matera Cultural Capital, 2019), as well as exhibitions within
major international platforms including the Istanbul Design Biennial (2012), the
Venice Architecture Biennale (2010), the São Paulo Biennial of Architecture
(2007).
She has participated in several international residency programs, including
Onassis AiR (2023), the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation residency with exhibition
at Haus Gropius (2021), ARCAthens Virtual Residency (2021), the SNF Artist
Fellowship Program ARTWORKS (2020), the Hannsmann-Poethen
Literaturstipendium with exhibition at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2020), and
Routes/Strade artisti in residenza urbana temporanea at Fondazione Teseco per
l’Arte (2010).
Since 2013, she has taught at institutions including the Technical University of
Munich, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå School of Architecture, the
University of Thessaly, Kyoto University, Escuela Libre de Arquitectura in Tijuana,
and the Floating University in Berlin.
She is also co-editor of the book Porous City: From Metaphor to Urban Agenda
(Birkhäuser, 2018).