Born in Athens, Irini Gonou graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and after from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, where she lived for eleven years.
She has shown her art work in thirty two solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Her solo exhibition Al-Khatt, the magic script on 2009 was a visual dialog with the Benaki Museum of Islamic Arts exhibits in Athens.
She has participated in a numerous group exhibitions in Greece, but also in France, Belgium, Germany, UK, USA, Norway and Egypt. Her artwork is included to some Museum collections as well as to Municipal Galleries, private Museums and Foundations, and to a variety of important private collections in Greece and abroad.
She lives and works in Athens and teaches a calligraphy workshop on the Mediterranean Writings at the Museum of Islamic Arts of Athens.
Irini Gonou is a Greek artist whose work portrays elements of healing and protection within ancient traditions from different cultures.
The element of nature is evident in the artist's work.The Protective Cloths are made of herbal dyed cotton, linen textiles and antique Indian silk. The inscribed reeds attached on them are some kind of amulets. In many traditional societies all around the world, the written word is believed to provide protection as well as the cloth is believed to be a protective living thing, recording life. Charged with the protective properties of the written reeds and permeated with the plants extracts, the Protective or Apotropaic Cloth emits protection, a kind of cloth-shield to ward off all kind of evil intentions.
