Lefteris Yakoumakis

Lefteris was born in Athens in 1984. He studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He started out working on large-scale oil and acrylics paintings and later moved to smaller works which combined digital color with traditional ink.
He has exhibited his work in group exhibitions in Greece and the USA and solo in Greece and Iceland. He has worked as a teacher and has traveled around a lot. From 2013 to 2016 he divided his time between Greece and Iceland. In December 2010 he was invited as an artist for the “Herhúsið” Artist Hosting Program in Siglufjörður, Iceland. In March and April 2011, he was invited as an artist for the “Kanaal10” Artist Hosting Program in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and in October 2015 he was hosted at the Kansas City International Residency at the Artists Coalition in Kansas, USA.
In 2014 he published the book / album “55 Ways to pronounce the word Siglufjörður”.
Since 2017 he has been working as a comic artist and has published two indie-released comic books: “Dichala”, in collaboration with Kampos Publications and “The Struggles”, in English, written by himself and Lydia Athanasopoulou.
In 2019, our collaboration and creative conversations with Lefteris led to the dismantling of the mural at Elephant Design.
In 2021, he became the protagonist of a short documentary called “Trash” directed by the filmmaker Eleftheria Katsianou. “Trash” is about Lefteris, who lives in Athens, draws on trash and wants to free himself from the city and from whatever haunts him personally. As the cycle of drawing on trash ends, Lefteris looks for other ways to free himself. The documentary has been presented in festivals both in Greece and abroad and was nominated for an Iris award by the Hellenic Film Academy.
A series of unfortunate events brought him back to Iceland where he now lives and works. You’ll find him exhibiting at a comic book festival, studying art at museums, or climbing mountains.
He is currently writing a book about his experiences as a fishery worker in Iceland and, working on his next comic. He is the creator of Myndasöguhátið Siglufjarðar.