Ilias Papailiakis was born in 1970, in Crete. He lives and works in ATHENS. He studied painting at the ATHENS School of Fine Arts, between 1990-1996. In 1998 he was awarded the 1st Prize of Yannis and Zoe Spyropoulos Foundation. In 2001 he represented Greece at the 49th Venice Art Biennale. In 2001, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art organized a retrospective exhibition with works he created between 1998-2001. In 2009 the Berlin branch of the Hellenic Foundation of CULTURE organized a retrospective exhibition with Papailiakis’ works belonging to German collections, from the period between 2005-2009. In 2013 he was nominated for the Deste Foundation Prize. In 2017 he participated in documenta14 (Kassel, Germany, and ATHENS, Greece). In 2018 he took part in the 6th ATHENS Biennale, ‘ANTI’. His work has been presented in more than 25 solo exhibitions in Greece and internationally. Between 2009-2019 he was a visiting tutor at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras. In 2020, the Municipal Gallery of ATHENS hosted his solo exhibition, “Theoretical Objects: Works 2017-2020.”