Maria Dimitra Kozari Mela was born and raised in Athens by an artistic couple who perhaps unintentionally took care of her first act of personal branding by giving her two names and two surnames. The result: a name long enough to sound faintly Spanish and memorable enough to be useful.

From an early age, she was drawn to systems of storytelling. Comics, drawing, books, animation, music, cinema, and theatre were not just interests but ways of understanding how images and narratives shape perception. This inclination led her to study Graphic Design at the University of West Attica. She later spent seven months as an Erasmus student at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, an experience that proved to be formative and quietly reorienting.

She graduated with a BSc in Graphic Design and continued with an MA in Digital Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts. There, her practice expanded both artistically and theoretically, as she worked with time based media, moving image, sound design, interactive environments, installations, and algorithmic applications in art, developing a mindset that moves between analysis and intuition.

In parallel, she developed a professional path as an Art Director within the advertising industry, working with agencies such as McCann, Frank & Fame, Solid Havas and Cicero, as well as in digital publishing at 24Media. Her work in this field includes art direction, 360 campaigns, TVC and radio spots, branding, illustration, concept development, packaging, typography, digital design, video editing, and animation, often bringing these disciplines together rather than treating them as separate parts.

As an artist, her work centers on animation and installation, often incorporating algorithmic systems, sound, and narrative as structural elements rather than decorative additions. Her focus lies in exploring loneliness, wearable technology as a means of control, and the relationship between physical presence and mediated experience.

She has directed two short animated films, Hapillness (2013) and They (2015), early experimental works that already suggest a preoccupation with narrative construction, emotional undercurrents, and the peculiar logic of imagined worlds.

Her interdisciplinary background has led her to move between advertising, graphic design, art, theatre, and cinema, alongside a brief involvement in cultural production and journalism. She is drawn to collaboration, especially with people who take ideas seriously enough to question them. Her work, both individual and collective, has received awards, which she tends to treat as signs that something resonated at the right moment.

Maria wears many hats as a creative professional, driven not only by necessity but by a steady curiosity about how each role changes the way one sees.