Born in Cairo to Greek parents, Maria Klonaris grew up in Alexandria.
In Athens and Paris, she acquired an interdisciplinary education: Graphic Arts and Scenography (Athens School of Fine Arts), English Literature (Athens University), Egyptology (École pratique des Hautes études), Film and Aesthetics (Université Paris I), and Computer Graphics (École des Arts décoratifs). She passed away in Paris in 2014. When she died, Maria Klonaris left a vast output of drawings she had kept secret, as well as unpublished collections of poetry.
Born in Athens where she grew up, Katerina Thomadaki pursued interdisciplinary studies and research in Athens and Paris: Literature and Philosophy (Athens University), Theatre Studies (Université Paris III), Aesthetics and Art Sciences (Université Paris I), and Computer Graphics (École des Arts décoratifs). She was formerly an associate professor at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. As a teacher-researcher, she has participated in several research groups in the fine arts and film.

Filmmakers, artists, and theorists of Greek origins, living in Paris since 1975, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki co-sign a multidisciplinary œuvre that is rooted in experimental theatre and cinema and brings together over a hundred creations structured in cycles – La Tétralogie corporelle [The Corporeal Tetralogy] (1975–1979), Le Cycle de l’Unheimlich [The Unheimlich Cycle] (1977–1982), La Série Portraits [The Portraits Series] (1979–1992), Le Cycle des Hermaphrodites [The Hermaphrodites Cycle] (1982–1990), Le Rêve d’Electra [Electra’s Dream] (1983–1990), Le Cycle de L’Ange [The Angel Cycle] (1985– ), Les Jumeaux [The Twins] (1995–2000) – as well as an extensive corpus of publications (manifestoes, essays, interviews).
The work of the two artists has gained international recognition (MoMA New York, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, National Gallery of Art Washington, Cinémathèque française, British Film Institute, Kunsthalle Wien, Benaki Museum and Onassis Foundation in Athens, Taipei Contemporary Art Museum, Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, etc). Retrospectives of their films have been presented by the Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Pompidou in 1980, the Galerie J. & J. Donguy in 1985, Le Lux – Scène Nationale de Valence in 2010, the Jeu de Paume in 2016 and the MAXXI (Rome) in 2022.
Cultural activists, Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki edited in the nineties three editions of the Rencontres Internationales Art cinéma/vidéo/ordinateur and directed the publications Technologies et imaginaires (Dis/voir, 1990), Mutations de l’image (A.S.T.A.R.T.I., 1994), and Pour une écologie des médias (A.S.T.A.R.T.I., 1998).
Between 2004 and 2019, the CNC’s Film Heritage Directorate, in collaboration with them, carried out exemplary restorations of their major films. Four feature films and one short film have thus been preserved. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France inaugurated in 2012 a Klonaris/Thomadaki Collection, described in collaboration with the artists (François Mitterrand site, Archives and Manuscripts). Digitised by the Institut national de l’audiovisuel, their Ateliers de Création Radiophonique [Workshops for Radiophonic Creation] (France Culture, 1983- 1994) can be consulted at the InaTHEQUE de France (BnF, François Mitterrand site).
In 2020 and 2023, Re:Voir dedicated two special DVD editions to their work: Le Cycle de l’Ange, Selected Works, and Double Labyrinthe & Selected Works, which both included bilingual French-English booklets.
In 2024, historic works by Klonaris/Thomadaki have joined the Centre Pompidou’s Nouveaux médias collections; the Patronage Committee of the Fondation des artistes has supported the Klonaris/Thomadaki exhibition at Bétonsalon; the Prix d’Honneur AWARE for women artists is awarded to both artists for the entirety of their joint career.
http://www.klonaris-thomadaki.net

Maud Jacquin is an art historian and curator. Her research focuses on the moving image and performance, feminist art and theory, and theories of narrative and translation. With Katerina Thomadaki, she organised a major retrospective devoted to the cinematic work of Klonaris/Thomadaki (Jeu de Paume, 2016). On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op, she curated a film cycle and performance programme dedicated to the Co-op’s women filmmakers which was held at Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London and then at Anthology Film Archives, New York and Glasgow Film Theatre in autumn 2016. She is also co-director with Sébastien Pluot of Art By Translation, an international research and exhibition programme involving partner institutions in several European and North American countries and, each year, four artists taking part in research as part of the post-graduate programme at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy and the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design, TALM, Angers. Their most recent exhibitions include “L’intolérable ligne droite” (Galerie Art&Essai, Rennes), “Shelter or Playground” (MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles) and “The Tyranny of Distance” (TALM-Angers and FLAX@Tinflats, Los Angeles). Prior to this, they carried out in-depth research into Alison Knowles’ intermedia work The House of Dust and reactivated its form- and community-generating potential through several group exhibitions, colloquia and performances in New York (James Gallery, CUNY; Barnard College, Emily Harvey Foundation), Montreal (Fonderie Darling), Paris (CNEAI=, La Galerie de Noisy-le-sec) and Los Angeles (CalArts, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, REDCAT).
After a Master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she completed her thesis on the politics of narrative in feminist experimental film and video at University College London under the supervision of Tamar Garb.