Ariana Papademetropoulos Warps Archetypal Ways of Seeing with Ghostly Fantasies

Unicorns are creatures from another world, but they are tied to the collective consciousness of humankind—present and absent at once, following the traditions of mythologies built upon reality. Today, they are symbols of a beautiful, perfectly imperfect fantasy.

It therefore comes as no surprise that Ariana Papademetropoulos would have painted them: Unicorns are, somehow, her emblem. The artist, too, is a creature from another world. After a childhood spent in Pasadena, California, she took on Los Angeles, not as a foreign entity—as so many artists who are not native Angelenos do—but as her very essence. The innateness of the city to Papademetropoulos’s work requires that her engagement with it be stronger than it has been for other artists. The milk of dreams the City of Angels feeds its protégés had to be condensed into her practice. LA is a place where fantasy and reality are not separate, but coexist as one ambiguous, complete way of life.