Dorothée Mesander

Dorothée Mesander is a Greece based Dutch self-taught collage artist (some mixed media/assemblage work). She studied International Public Law in the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and the UK (Exeeter). Collage is the medium through which she can most passionately visualize her imaginary world.She considers her paper hand cut collages narrative ones, parts of a story on paper, like a still movie frame you could say, which continues after the cutting and pasting. She is not working in one style, which could be defined by using either new or old paper, as she is using both; when choosing however exclusively vintage paper in a collage, it is in particular the 1950's and early 1960's magazine ads. The repurposing of these in new and often surrealistic setting is rewarding and challenges the viewer to look beyond it's original purpose. Since 2011 she has participated in over 60 group exhibitions both in Greece and abroad (Madrid, Edinburgh, Athens, Thessaloniki, Milan, Dublin, Santa Fe, Portland and Washington) and 2017 saw her first solo exhibition followed by a second in 2020 and a third in 2022. Her submission to the Collagistas Festival 4th edition in Milan, was picked by an Italian visual designer to feature on the cover of a publication about language with contributions of female inmates of the San Vittore Prison where the collage now hangs in it's library. Her work has been featured in several publications and is in both public and private collections. Since 2013 she is a voted member of the Visual Artists' Association of Northern Greece. She gives collage workshops, participates in international art group projects and has established the Thessaloniki Collage Club in 2018 to bring as many people as possible in contact with the art of collage.