MO.17 Catalogue A by phytorio

MODUS OPERANDI Modus Operandi 2017 (MO.17), deals with emerging artists under the age of 35, and during their early professional stage. It aims to present a matrix of practices, as well as their connections to local culture and the world, as they currently stand. The program aims to create the conditions for an animated and potentially, expanding archive that documents today, as well as in the long run, the artistic vigour of local artists. Taking the form of a publication, website and exhibitions, it allows anyone interested, on either a local or international level, to connect directly with artists whose work resonates with their interests. Consequently, the archive offers an overview of an emerging art scene in Cyprus, creating a place for meetings, discussion and exchange. Modus Operandi is a project realised by The Visual Artists Association (EI.KA), which was founded in 2006 in Nicosia by a small group of artists. Today, it represents a large number of professional artists and art theorists, who work for the promotion and progress of local art and culture. The aim of the association is to support the rights of artists and to create a legal framework for the status of the artist, including medical care, social security and pension allowance.

PROJECT COLLABORATORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Visual Artists Association Cyprus, (EI.KA) Board of Directors 2015-2017 President: Maria Loizidou Vice president: Natalie Yiaxi Treasurer: Marlen Kartelidou Secretary: Michalis Papamichael Member: Athina Antoniadou Planning and Organization Maria Loizidou Natalie Yiaxi Curators Julia Geerlings Emily Gray Charis Kanellopoulou Evagoras Vanezis Invited Guests and Speakers Chrystèle Moulun Casanova Christopher Marinos Maria Petrides Socrates Socratous Research Fellow/Collaborator Tina Pandi Coordination Leontios Toumpouris Evagoras Vanezis Design Nico Stephou Web Developer Nicholas Chrysanthou Editing and Translating Maria Petrides Communication Kiriakos Spirou Images are courtesy of the artists. They have the responsibility for the copyright permission. We regret any omissions. © 2017 Visual Artists Association Cyprus EI.KA All Rights Reserved

INDEX

A 1 Anastasiou Evelyn 2 Andreou Maria 3 Angeli Raissa 4 Apostolou Ioanna 5 Archontides Adonis B 6 Benjamin Lara Sophie C 7 Charalambous AnnaMaria 8 Charalambous Michael 9 Cheimona Ioanna 10 Chimonas Dimitris 11 Christofi Stella 12 Christodoulou Christoforos 13 Constandinou Eirene 14 Constantinides Marios D 15 Dia.gnosis 16 Doukanaris Panayiotis E 17 Eramian Peter G 18 Georgiou Lenia H 19 Hadjigeorgiou Lilia 20 Haholiadou Ismini 21 Hirodontis Avraam K 22 Kallinikou Stelios 23 Kallitsi Demetra 24 Kapsali Andri 25 Karageorgi Stella 26 Kattou Lito 27 Kofterou Maria 28 Kouzapas Ioannis L 29 Leonidou Victoria M 30 Mina Anastasia 31 Mina Panagiotis 32 Mouzourou Eleni N 33 nowwhat P 34 Pafiou Anthi 35 Pagdati Nicoleta-Eleonora 36 Pala Evi 37 Pambouka Alexandra 38 Padeli Michelle 39 Papacosta Sophia 40 Papamichael Andreas 41 Petrou Yorgos 42 Phyla Eleni 43 Procopiou Spyros S 44 Savva Nayia 45 Maria Spivak 46 Stefani Ariana 47 Stergides Korallia 48 Symeou Christina T 49 Themistocleous George 50 Theocharous Kyriakos 51 Toumazou Maria 52 Toumpouris Leontios X 53 Xenofontos Marina Z 54 Zavou Toula 55 Zeniou Efy

This Star is Relatively Young, detail, 2017 Feline 3, Digital Embroidery On Lycra Textile, Aluminium, Dimensions Variable, 2016

Untitled 3, Pigment, Print, 80x53cm, 2016 Untitled 4, Silkscreen Print on CementTile, 40x40x3cm, 2017

Untitled, cement, cement dust, kinetic and sound mechanism of plastic doll, 130x200x70 cm, 2010

leavinghomefunktion, The Theatre of the Ural A Play in Breakdowns, self-made bureaucracy for performance based research, 2015 leavinghomefunktion, Amphibious Ural 650, Documentation From Driving 1600 km on the Kolyma River, 2016

Garden, 3 aluminium ladders, pots, wheat and soil, dimensions variable, 2016 Garden Vase by VEB Haldensleben East Germany, vase by Carstens West Germany, soil, lettuce, The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire by WikiLeaks, Brexit: How Britain Left Europe by Denis MacShane, Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz, Die Berliner Mauer by Hans-Hermann Hertle, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, dimensions variable, photo by Andrea Palašti.

Family Album, photographic prints, 135x90cm, 2016

Palimpsest Narration, blackboard and chalk dust, 100x180cm, 2016

-Hi, ebook published by Radical Reading, 2016 1,2,3, 2017, air dried clay, 38.5x23x20cm, 2017, Semi-relationship, 2016, fiberglass and hands, 87x66,5cm. Also shown: Orestis Lazouras’ George’s bum, 2015, plaster, 12x11x10cm, Orestis Lazouras Fish fingers by Dad, 2016, Acrylic on stretched canvas, 114x113.5cm, 2017

Zoi (Clay Woman) and Golden Award, plastic bags, water, clay, 300x20x105cm, 2017

Patterns and Symbols in Search of Identity, poster (detail), archival print, 61x90cm, 2017

Patterns and Symbols in Search of Identity, poster, expanded view, 190x120cm, 2017

Spring Opens Like a Blade Here, metal, straw, fabric, glass, 2017

Cataclysm (photo/poem publication and exhibition), photographic prints (80x60cm) and photobook (20x24cm), installation view, 2015 The Area is Sacred, site specific installation, found modified objects and photographs, dimensions variable, 2013

Whale For An Ear, video, 3’ 10, 2017 Physical Literacy, collaboration with Beckie Cove, video, 1’ 20, 2016

Seva stage, earth, rocks, sound system, osb table and cement bricks, inner circle (2.70x2.40x1m), middle circle (9.70x9.90m), outer circle (21.70x18.90m)

Minimal (installation view), 8 inverted holes, white concrete, concrete iron rods, earth, 2016

In What Colour Should I Believe In, saint on wood, wood cabinet, RGB Led, UV black light, phosphorescent liquid, 80x60x12cm, 2013-2014

Landscape, detail, pencil on paper, 70x100cm, 2016

Still of a Bubble, 102x66cm, pencil on cotton paper, 2015

Untitled, collagraphy, 21x30cm, 2015

In Vino Veritas, collaborative performance, Lenia Georgiou, Chrysoula Plakioti, Emanuella Dondossola, contributor Nicoletta Braga, 2015 My place, performance, 2014

Sense of Sight, site-specific installation with multiple rythmic light sources, mixed media on photo print Vitrine’s Room, light installation & performance in a vitrine. performers: Eirene Constantinou, Alexandros Karagiannis, Danay Sikinioti,Christiana Papacosta, Lena Papadopoulou 2014

Human Fragility at its Finest, Part Two. The early days of an Escapist, glass, glue, ink and personal objects, 35x35x35cm, 2016

Graffiti by Reap, 2017

48 Double Decker, digital drawing, 297x420mm, 2017

Anecdoche, oil on canvas, 24x18cm, 2016

Translation, digital drawing, 297x420mm, 2017

Heaven’s Door, bronze, 35x30cm, 2015

Brother&Brother, 150x150cm, mixed media on canvas, 2016

Hindsight, oil on canvas, 80x100cm, 2017

35 Interconnected, pencil and ink drawing on paper, 21x24cm, 2017 Fourth Dimension, MDF, beans, plastic, cotton, water, 100x120cm, 2017

There-there!, digital print of found image on carpet, 45x60cm, 2017 Geworfenheit, fiberglass, iron, car spring, 38x181x40cm, 2017 Ok, he said with a grin, Terracotta, resin, 14x22x17,5cm, 2017

Magnificent Views 1, installation, paper, tape, mirrors, 21x29.7x15.5cm, 2016

Fold, concrete, 60x65x57cm, 2016

8 Untitled, digital print, dimensions variable, 2017

Erased Music Notes Or Choral Music For Upper Voices, screen print on wall, 25x33cm, 2017

Working Title, plaster, 90x25x20cm, 2017

Set List, digital engraving on stone, 90x66cm, 2011

Untitled, oil on untreated canvas, 50x80cm, 2017

Untitled, threads from undone painted canvas, 40x40x30cm, 2016

Group Art Performance, art performance, contributor Christina Georgiou, 2015 Always Me, embroidery on canvas, 14,8x21cm, 2017

A Land Rover Approached the Village (Black Rainbow), lightbox, 65x55cm, 2017 Karat Castle, Stickers On Plexiglass, fluorescent light, chain, 72x28x13cm, 2015

Untitled (S1-4), pigment print on sandpaper, 21x29cm, 2017

Untitled VII, graphite on pigment print, 152x310cm, 2017

Bestfriend, copper tube, contact microphone, rotating motor, 11mx12mm, 2015

Diplorasis, Spectral Immersivity, visual media installation, glass mirrors, acrylic mirrors, sandblasted glass on timber and aluminium frame, metallic structures, vinyl floor, LED lighting, raspberry PIS, arduino micro-controller, DSLR cameras, kula stereoscopic lenses, stepper motors, LCD screens, router, motion sensors & peripherals, acrylic laser cut components, 6.5x1.2x2.7m, 2015-2017

Humpty Dumpty, plates on wooden table, tea bags, sound, dimensions variable, 2016

The Letter, paper and powdered sugar, dimensions variable, 2016

Website/ongoing participatory project, 2016

Untitled, fabric and wood, 50x35x10cm, 2017

Untitled (From The Project ‘The Double F’), mixed media, 150x100cm, 2016

Untitled (From The Project ‘The Double F’), materic painting, 150x100cm, 2016

Untitled, straw, 5x4.5x5cm and 16x3.5x9.5cm, 2017

41 Landmark III, digital print on paper, copper plate, concrete (detail), 140x12.5x10cm, 2016

Point Home, c-type print, brown tape, 59.5x84cm, 2016

Birthday (3 days | 24 hours), performance. photo by Panos Kokkinias, 2016 The Dust Is Expected To Retreat By Tomorrow, play, with En.act, 2016, photo by Adonis Archontides

The Mayor, Pafos gum, 16x19cm, 2016

Ceramics, dimensions variable, 2016

Eerie Nomination, charcoal and chalk on canvas, 200x180cm, 2015 HOLY, pencil and rabbit skin on canvas, 200x160cm, 2016

Untitled, oil on canvas, 200x150cm, 2011

Untitled, oil on canvas, 130x110cm, 2013

Untitled #10, canvas on canvas, 190x190cm, 2014

Untitled #11, canvas on canvas, 190x190cm, 2014

Somatodieresis, Drawing Series I, drawing with pencil and watercolours, 21x29.7cm, 2016 Somatodieresis, mixed media installation including video projection, sound and sculptures, 7x6.5x3m, 2016

Where are you going young man handsome like a legend, installation view, archival pigment prints, dimensions variable, 2017 Local Studies, installation view, archival pigment prints, dimensions variable, 2016

Site-specific installation with various recycled materials, dimensions variable, 2009

The Wheel 2, mixed media, 63x15cm, 2009

Lefkaritiko 2, cotton thread on linen, 100X120cm, 2017 Untitled, ink on paper glass, bronze foil & solder, 2x21x30x2cm, 2017

Butterfly (Detail), mixed media, 1.83x98x70cm, 2015

Transitions, photographic print, 47x33cm, 2017

Transitions, photograph, 47x33cm, 2017

Memo-garden, Artist’s Book (detail)/ installation, dimensions variable, paper, stamp ink, pencil, digital print, bookbinding thread, 2016

Lefkara Sensibility Series, acrylic on canvas and wood, 60x60cm, 2017 Re-enlivening the Archaic, installation, dimensions variable, 2012

After Way Way, mixed media, 15x600x144cm, 2015 My Jeans, concrete & jeans, variable dimensions, 2017

Disintegrations, wood, mold, fungi, maps, rocks, soil, plastic bag, dimensions variable, 2016

Feast of Sowing, performance, 2016

A moment in remembering matter, wet, dry, bisque fired and high fired stoneware and earthenware clay, steel, plaster, glass, dimensions variable, 2016 Perhaps potentials are enough / Stasis, bisque fired stoneware and earthenware clay, dimensions variable, detail, 2016

1.2.3 Container, Blu-ray 16/9, colour, stereo, 5’5”, loop, 2014. Untitled 2014 [uncertain], 20 liters of water, metal, dimensions variable, 2014 Sphere, soil, water, diameter 25cm, 2015-2016. A Composition of Containers, C-print 30x20cm, 2015-2016

Detail from YOU (You Are The Mountain and You Are the Fall), mirrors, vinyl lettering, rotating bases, 2014

Detail from ‘The Word’ (bronze sculpture) mixed media, dimensions variable, 2016

École Supérieure des Beaux Arts Montpellier, France

EVELYN ANASTASIOU Lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus

+ 357 96509976 cargocollective.com/evelynaanastasiou contact@evelynanastasiou.com

Evelyn Anastasiou (b. 1981) studied at the Superior School of Fine Arts of Montpellier in France. In 2009 she represented Cyprus at the Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean in Skopje where she was awarded for the Res Artis. Worldwide Network of Artist Residencies. Soon after, she had her first solo exhibition at Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium, followed by group and solo exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad. She has participated in residencies in Austria, Belgium and France. Using musical symbols and musical language in all its variations, my work incorporates sound without voice. Everything speaks and sings but is not heard. Everything seems to be mute. A silent musical.

London Metropolitan Supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Whitehall

MARIA ANDREOU

+ 357 99555628 www.mariaandreou.com mariaandreou@live.co.uk

Lives & works in Limassol, Cyprus Maria Andreou (b. 1989) is a research-oriented, multidisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates drawing, performance, print, time-based media, language and materials, treating her installations as landscapes. Andreou studied Design and Applied Arts in Paris before receiving her BA (Hons) in Fine Arts from London Metropolitan University in 2013. She has been artist-in-residence at foundations and organisations: ‘ARTos Cultural and Research and Cultural Foundation’ in 2014; ‘Phytorio Cyprus Visual Artists’ in 2016. Language being Maria Andreou’s main medium, its use has also grown to be the central theme of her practice. In this process, she attempts to separate and occupy the space between expression and communication. The work employs linguistic play informed by the sociopolitical and historical collective connotations attached to it, both in its deliverance and reading. These performative elements become vital to the experience and presentation of each project. In her work and on-going research, she investigates and focuses on the dynamics and politics present in the interconnections of the relationship between individual and society but also their own relation to nature. Consequently, notions such as displacement and belonging, reality versus desire are highlighted. Language facilitates the creation

Academy of Fine Arts of Prague Supervisors: Jaroslav Rona and Michael Rittstein

RAISSA ANGELI

of overlapping layers of understanding for us to exist as individuals and coexist as a collective. As a result, this process becomes the critical point that sparks an all-encompassing organic growth as reflected in language itself. When it comes to the actualisation (aesthetic implementation) of the work, materiality and practicality are affected by the physical and contextual space it is presented in. The techniques and mediums vary from the immaterial, such as video projections, photographic sequences, online platforms, to the use of materials like resin or natural pigments. The reading of the work encourages a sense of tangibility and familiarity to the public with an ultimate goal to stimulate the creation of a social and conversational space.

+ 357 99541997 www.raissaangeli.com raissaisjumpingoncars@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Raissa Angeli (b. 1986) is a visual artist. In 2005, she studied the Czech language at the Charles University of Prague for a year. She also enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts of Prague (AVU). She studied sculpture at the studio of Jaroslav Rona and painting at the studio of Michael Rittstein. She graduated in 2011 with a Master’s degree in Sculpture, and was awarded the Sculpture Studio First Prize. Raissa Angeli is a visual artist working primarily in sculpture and sometimes drifting into other media such as video, drawing, painting, and installation. Being concerned with the irreducible specificity of the particular things that it approaches, her work resists (though does not preclude) classification under a general concept. Examples of such

Frederick University, Nicosia Supervisor: Savvas Christodoulides

IOANNA APOSTOLOU

things as dealt with in her past work are planes of no use, sunbathing and burial sacrifices, faulty perception, memorials, values and valuation, industrial prefixed products and compromises, mountains, and tutorials of cosmic things.

+ 357 96665862 ioanna.apostolou.cy@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Ioanna Apostolou (b. 1991) holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Frederick University, Cyprus. She completed her MA in June 2017, under the supervision of Dr. Savvas Christodoulides, and is a trained architect (Professional Diploma in Architecture, from the department of Architecture, Frederick University, Cyprus having Mr. Byron Ioannou as her supervisor.)

Through Ioanna Apostolou’s research and personal exploration, she tries to define in her own way the concepts of time, space, path and the experience of transition. All routes are transitions to the site. The relationship with the natural landscape rigorously and inadvertently creates a physical and mental connection with existing space. Her interventions are positions taken at the area investigated. She moves in the natural environment marked through the memory, and paths performed, creating paths from successive points in space. Some of her works are defined as interventions in space and time. Relief structures consisting of different materials are defined as landscapes. Their formation is constituted by the delimitation and creation of internal and external borders. With the help of a mirror, she

tries to create a new area on the basis of the elements determining the existing space, replacing them with the area of origin. The attachment or embolism part of an image to another has the effect of creating a new reality, a new vital area. The idea starts by recording the path on paper and then implementing it with the help of an electronic design program. Design studies are completed by creating a three-dimensional construction. Construction shows Apostolou’s desire to give meaning to the idea of transition, sometime thinking of it as a pass, the threshold of transition from one region to another. The work, in other words, is defined as three-dimensional writing. The stones contained in the work accompany the writing and indicate the starting, ending or ending points of the path she is trying to write or record.

University of Arts London/LCC Supervisor: Paul Bowman

ADONIS ARCHONTIDES

+ 357 99686704 www.ragnanox.com hello@ragnanox.com

Lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus Adonis Archontides (b. 1991) graduated from the University of Arts London with a diploma in Illustration & Visual Media, studying under the course leader Paul Bowman. His areas of research include truth, memory and the construction of the Self. He has participated in group shows (amongst others) at Uqbar Project Space, Berlin; Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia; Phytorio, Nicosia; NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol; Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh; The Wallace Collection, London; St. Leonard’s Church, London. Archontides has created video installations for several events; published work in the Cyprus Dossier, OWK Zine and Cake Journal, and is currently a co-director of Tech-à-Tête, an interdisciplinary non-profit arts collective based in Limassol. Adonis Archontides’ interests revolve mainly around themes of truth, memory and the construction of the self by working through past and current cultural references. Throughout the years, his work sometimes took a psychoanalytical tone. He makes work out of traumatic personal events, such as breakups or his own personality complexes. More recently, he has been researching his namesake (the Greek birthdeath-rebirth deity, Adonis) and looking at the repercussions it’s had on him, his solipsistic views of the world, how they can be dealt with, and how the myth relates to current sociopolitical events. He has also been trying to branch out to using mediums that demand

interaction – a means of forcing himself to see through the eyes of “others” or aiding “others” into seeing through his. Examples of such interaction include: Common Collections, a workshop held at festivals in which participants record their experiences using writing and photography; The Game, a memory game played in a group, in which players create a (voluntary or involuntary) story by adding words each turn; and, Postmortem, a work-in-progress videogame in which players are invited to repeatedly walk through four rooms (which he was in during four past break-ups) as digitally reconstructed from memory.

University Campus Suffolk, UK Supervisor: Shaun Camp

LARA SOPHIE BENJAMIN

+ 357 99757511 larasophiebenjamin.com larasophiebenjamin@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Lara Sophie Benjamin (b. 1987) studied art at Camberwell College of Arts, the Cyprus College of Art, and at University Campus Suffolk from where she received a Master’s in Arts Practice, in 2015, accredited by the University of East Anglia and University of Essex. During her studies at Cyprus College of Art she worked closely with Stass Paraskos and Andros Efstathiou. Her work has been exhibited in Cyprus, the UK and France, and is part of many private and public collections. Benjamin is a painter working primarily with oil paints. She draws subject matter from everyday surroundings and finds a significant resonance in ordinary sights and spaces. She is interested in their experiential nature, subjective and selective readings and their formal qualities. Windows and doorways are of particular interest, having liminal associations, being transitional places where time and action are suspended, where both outside and inside are present. The outer and inner world come together on the canvas through the activity of painting. Familiar shapes lose their meaning and become part of a modified actuality. Benjamin works intuitively and sees painting as

an unending process of exploration and discovery based on formal and aesthetic qualities, and the versatility of paint. Painting is a constant balancing act; a continual push and pull of opposing forces. Painters construct an image and, at the same time, deconstruct it. Ideally, an image must hold together while simultaneously falling apart. Ambiguity in what one is looking at is engaging, revealing information as well as a lack of it. And, during the process of making, the artist exists somewhere between control and loss of control - the dichotomy between knowing and not knowing.

Kingston University, London Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus Supervisors: Brian McCann and Klitsa Antoniou

ANNAMARIA CHARALAMBOUS + 357 96740700 charalambous.amc@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus AnnaMaria Charalambous (b. 1990) is a fine art graduate of Kingston University, UK, (2012) and an MA graduate at Frederick University, Nicosia (2016). She has participated in group shows including: Asterism 1, Final Degree Show, Pharos Centre of Contemporary Art, Nicosia, (June 2016), “UNACCOMPANIED. An exhibition”, Nicosia, (October 2015), dis-LOCATE/a New Threads Project, NeMe, Limassol, “Effective Spaces”, group exhibition/workshop with Hermann Pitz(De), and, INSPIRE 2014, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. She has participated in the performance of Dagmar’s I. Glausnitzer-Smith (De) and has co-curated and participated in “IMBROGLIO a state of mind” at Cultural Centre Miloi, Nicosia, (September 2013). Lastly, she has worked as an assistant for Maria Loizidou’s exhibition, “A TRANSFER”, Kerameikos Museum and Archaelogical Site, NEON CITY PROJECT 2015, Athens, (September-October 2015). Through her artworks, AnnaMaria Charalambous explores not only the possibilities but also the dynamics and the visual array of installations as art forms. Her artwork is an important part and extension of herself and she expresses her thoughts, feelings and ideas in an attempt to imprint reality based on her perspective. Her work is mainly based on the concept of narration, storytelling, and personal texts. Main themes of her work are childhood memories, trauma and abandonment. She doesn’t aim to represent and illustrate work of the text or to “translate” it visually, but aims for a personal interpretation of narration, a creation

of an artwork that stands in itself. The text is always a cause and not an end in itself. Each text influences her according to her experiences, thoughts and memories. The idea of transforming a space and creating a connection between space and the visual installation, resumes frequently in her work. Charalambous is especially interested in the dialogue that accumulates among space, the installation and the viewer. The idea that the same space acquires a new momentum and comes to life thanks to a piece of art intrigues her. From that point onwards, a story is born and whoever wants to follow will follow.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of visual and Applied Arts Supervisor: George Golfinos

MICHAEL CHARALAMBOUS

+ 357 99312345 www.michaelcharalambous.tumblr.com michalischaralambous.n@hotmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Michael Charalambous’ (b. 1987) graduated from the Faculty of the Fine Arts School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2013, having as his supervisor, Professor George Golfinos. Currently, he is a postgraduate student at the Open University of Cyprus, specializing in Cultural Policy and Development. His dissertation is based on research to do with independent artist-run spaces in Cyprus. Michael Charalambous’ focus is on issues relating to the urban and natural environment. His artistic practice engages with objects from natural and urban space, which can be transformed into sculptural forms and poetic narratives. His references come from archaeological objects and everyday functional, contemporary objects. His intention

Oxford Brookes University, UK Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus Supervisor: Dr. Klitsa Antoniou

IOANNA CHEIMONA

is to create multiple forms with plaster, concrete, steel and clay. The media he works with also include photograph, drawing and sculpture. Charalambous aims to be consistent in his creative process and is open to being led, like an alchemist, by his working materials, and looking forward to the “eureka” moments that deal with his ideas and materials.

+ 357 99994881 www.ioannacheimona.tumbrl.com ioannachei@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Ioanna Cheimona (b. 1991) is a visual artist. After completing a Foundation diploma in Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, UK in 2010, Cheimona studied Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University receiving BA in 2014. In September of 2016, she graduated with an MA in Fine Art: Contemporary Art Practices at Frederick University in Cyprus. In her project, “Face(t)s of Memory”: Found Photography and the Exploration of Family Albums, Ioanna Cheimona works with images from old photographs in a family album with faded and blurred colours... Images with damaged corners... Images of family members on day trips, in front of the new car... portraits of family friends, and pictures with new-born babies filled the family album. Diaries, letters and postcards from forgotten family records and their original time frame is for her the point of departure and the foundation for a thorough historical research. The idea of how to explore these instances from

University of Essex Supervisor: Uri Roodner Lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus

DIMITRIS CHIMONAS

long ago became the inspiration and the main focus of her visual work. Using both found photographs and family album interpretations, she investigates and challenges the way that family albums can preserve fragments of memory and speak to us across generations. At the moment, she is working with her mother’s family albums of photographs that hold memories and documentation of real events from her earlier years. In this way, she aims to create a new narrative, an imaginary wandering from the past with an ultimate ambition to renegotiate.

+ 357 99170281 www.dimitrischimonas.com dimis.chimonas@gmail.com

Dimitris Chimonas (b. 1993) holds a BA in Acting and Contemporary Theatre from the University of Essex. His work develops in the intersection between theatre and performance. Recent projects include ‘Birthday’ (Commissioned by NEON + MAI for the occasion of AS ONE, Benaki Museum, Athens) and ‘First Time of Time’ (Commissioned by Dance House Limassol for the OPEN HOUSE FESTIVAL of Dance and Performance).

III

Having trained in theatre, Dimitris Chimonas work is a result of performing, writing, installation and choreography processes. If life is called our longest endurance performance, then, as performers, responsibility must be acknowledged in order to create each moment uniquely. Choosing to create becomes an attempt to overcome the limits of existence and reach a sense of collectiveness. This friction between the personal and the social has been part of Chimonas’ main research interest. In his writings or performances, he often refers to personal stories, collective histories and strategies of emancipation. In his early performance, A Pig’s Heart in your Box, he recited all characters’ lines from Disney’s, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in front of a muted television, manipulating a number of objects, while sublimating and putting in perspective his relationship to the film’s narrative. For Birthday, he sang the birthday tune and blew candles repeatedly for

24 hours, allowing a series of unexpected emotions to occur. For First Time of Time, participants were invited to New Year’s Eve parties at random times of the year – hosted by Stella Georgiadou, a hit popstar of the 90s – where the signs and mythologies of celebrations in transition and collectiveness were staged and subverted. In an attempt to narrate, a fact becomes, as Barthes writes, “a novel that dares not speak its name”. Chimonas’ work is informed by narrations hidden in news, communities, and in the artist himself, in an effort to construct collectivities. He often works with the ready-made – material or immaterial – attracted by the state of ignorance related to their finitude. This also investigates how individuals use the act of creating to activate an object or a scenario into a horcrux: a little piece of themselves that can live outside their physical body.

Athens School of Fine Art Supervisor: Anastasios Christakis

STELLA CHRISTOFI

+ 30 6993257022 & + 357 99131644 stellachristofi100@gmail.com

Lives and works in Athens and Larnaca Stella Christofi (b. 1988) came first in the entry exams of the Fine Arts School of Athens having a scholarship from the Cyprus State Scholarship Foundation. She studied painting (2006-11) with supervisors Anastasios Christakis and Yiannis Kondaratos. She also took lessons in sculpture with Nikos Tranos (2006-08) and photography with Manolis Baboussis (2008-09), stage design with Lily Pezanou and multi-media with Manthos Santorineos (2009-10). In 2009 she was an ERASMUS student at the Universite Paris 8 in France having a State Scholarship Foundation (GR). She studied painting with her supervisor Francois Jeune, photography with Natalie van Doxell, and video art with Marion Lavae-Jeantet. Living in a period of crises where everything is fluid and changeable raises concerns to do with what images exist today. Stella Christofi makes contemporary abstract images through composition, colour and form. It comes from her personal experience and emotional world transmitted through an abstract view on the surface of painting. Light creates the whole image and modifies the composition, the size of form, the shape and the tone. She chooses colour through intuition or by randomly seeking a contemporary mood, which might lead the viewer to unprecedented paths. Based on the values of later modernism,

especially the minimalist tradition, she uses few materials, different textures, leaving parts of the canvas blank, or making an ideational geometry, especially in monochromatic compositions. The result of the painting is a clarity, which comes from a sense of “haze”, a “dirty” painting that becomes “clean”, and the image takes a structure, while reaching the spiritual. Stella Christofi wants to discover painting itself and which images could negotiate contemporary aesthetic apprehensions.

CHRISTOFOROS CHRISTODOULOU

Lives and works in Athens, Greece

Athens School of Fine Art Supervisors: Anastasios Christakis, Yiannis Kondaratos and Zafos Xagoraris

+ 357 6947357731 christoph.chriz@gmail.com

Christoforos Christodoulou (b. 1992) grew up under the hot sun which burnt his forehead and shaped his dreams. Being born in the Mediterranean was extraordinary. Living perennially between mythology and history has made his ability to transform and transcend the material world through art, salient. At Athens School of Fine Art he studied with professors Anastasios Christakis, Yiannis Kondaratos and Zafos Xagoraris. During 2014-2015, he spent a year at the University of Barcelona, granted by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation. Throughout his journey he tried to relish all experiences and grow under the enlightenment of art. Painting people, constructing objects, anything that can go through my hands I grab and apply to my practice. This procedure of transferring feelings and concerns is, for me, the best way to bring to life everything that troubles me, anything I feel I need to say as an artist. I usually derive inspiration from every little thing around me, from people and emotions, and try to apply them to my work. Through my art I deconstruct the established order of the environment around me and I use collage to create compositions that reflect life. Influenced by the intersection between human relationships, physics and mathematics, I started drawing people in the routine of daily life. Colour interests me even more. Bright and shining colours are what I like most because they convey the essence in the moment, making the synthesis seem more alive, interesting and vivid.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts Supervisor: George Skylogiannis

EIRENE CONSTATINOU

You can notice different layers in the paintings, blending different techniques and media, such as fabric, oil colours, glitter, and coloured cardboards. This complex of materials on the canvas creates a composition, which makes a reference to pop art. I also like working with different forms of art, besides painting, in a more conceptual way. Ideas cannot always be expressed through painting but need a more sculptural way of expression. Every art piece is self-contained. However, the aesthetic style of each piece is such that it communicates with the rest of the pieces, creating a uniform composition.

+ 357 97779275 http://infinitusvisum.wixsite.com/eirene-const infinitus.visum@gmail.com

Lives and works in Larnaca, Cyprus Eirene Constantinou (b. 1991) is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose focus is on light. Her current interest evolves around light and space, and her works are time-based, as her research gathers and deconstructs elements from New Media, Installation and Performance Art. In 2015, she earned a Master’s Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has participated in group exhibitions and workshops in museums, galleries and public space. She has attended themed seminars and art gatherings, fulfilling her curiosity in how people observe, learn and express art, whether included or excluded from a society’s system. In 2014, she co-founded the artists’ group ‘Ataxia’, organising self-curated exhibitions in Greece. Eirene Constantinou’s exploration of space, external as well as internal, uses light and its reflections to confuse the boundaries between reality and illusion. She creates objects and environments that reveal an illusory dimension in which time visually shapes its own environment, thus raising questions about contemporary aesthetic perception and philosophy. Within the variability of these spaces, the constant

movement of coloured lights gives substance to the insubstantial nature of light. Illusions change our perception of space and create known and less known geometries, which are “accepted” as real only through vision once it turns into a synthesis of the real and imaginary, where the work itself produces light and vice versa.

Athens School of Fine Art Supervisor: Anastasios Christakis Lives and works in Larnaca, Cyprus

MARIOS CONSTANTINIDES

+ 357 99557560 http://mariosconstantinides.com constantinidesm@gmail.com

Marios Constantinides (b. 1984) holds an MA in Visual Arts (Book Arts) from Camberwell College of the Arts and a BA in Illustration from Westminster University. He has been working as a visual artist and freelance Illustrator for the past 10 years. His work is multidisciplinary, spanning multiple expressions of what we call Visual Communication - illustration, Book arts, Visual design for performances and Printmaking. Recent exhibitions include Patterns and Symbols in Search of Identity at Phytorio, Nicosia (February 2017). Founding member of C.A.G.D.I “Cyprus Association of Graphic Designers & Illustrators” established in 2016 and currently employed as a researcher and special scientist for the Cyprus University of Technology. While working as a freelance illustrator of antiquities, Marios Constantinides has been recording patterns and symbols that he encounters in archives, museums and Cypriot archaeological sites. Depicting selected patterns and symbols in sequence and in contrast

Dia.gnosis

with each other, in print, he aims to map potential evolutions and migrations of notions and narratives within ancient Cypriot found artwork. He is fascinated by sequential imagery and the human capacity for assumptions.

The main practice of Dia.gnosis has been based on everyday life’s communication and struggle for interaction, as well as reaching a harmony in human relationships. Their sculpture and video art comes to life with the use of sound. Sound functions as a voyage of an archive of memories that travel through time, and carry strong emotional charges within the sole act of rhythm between two human bodies. Using the human body as their main “tool” to create their sculptures, they emphasise the discord as well as the concord of humans, throughout a life journey. A constant collision, which converts space and time into an existing memory, and brings energy into play as the main element of their work. An energy that derives from two or more individual auras, forming one, seeking to explain uniqueness and memory in a moment.

STEFANI STYLIANOU University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK Supervisors: Peter Hofer and Anthony Heywood

+ 357 96803272 & 357 99019819 stefanistylianou26@gmail.com

Lives and works in Pafos, Cyprus Stefani Stylianou (b. 1991) is a freelance artist who began her art education at the Cyprus Academy of Arts (CAA), completing her Foundation Diploma before moving to the UK for her major studies. She studied at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), Canterbury completing her BA degree in Fine Arts and graduated

in 2013. During her second year of studies, she collaborated with Maria Theodorou with whom, in 2013, she formed Dia.gnosis. Dia.gnosis has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the United Kingdom and Cyprus.

MARIA THEODOROU University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK Supervisors: Peter Hofer and Anthony Heywood

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Maria Theodorou (b. 1990) successfully completed her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury in June 2013, with a major in sculpture. Theodorou also holds a Master in Arts and Culture Management from Rome Business School. She has been working as an art teacher in Nicosia since 2015, while exhibiting as Dia.gnosis along with Stefani Stylianou.

+ 357 99844875 manicart@hotmail.com

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts and Birmingham City University, School of Art Supervisors: George Skylogiannis and Johnny Golding

PANAYIOTIS DOUKANARIS

+ 357 99288426 & + 30 6994937320 www.pdoukanaris.com pdoukanaris@gmail.com

Lives and works in Thessaloniki, Greece Panayiotis Doukanaris (b. 1991) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015 with a distinction, under the supervision of Professor George Skylogiannis. In 2016, he graduated with a distinction, holding a full scholarship, in an MA in Fine Arts from the School of Arts, Birmingham City University under the supervision of Professor Johnny Golding. He also participated in the Erasmus+ Scheme as an assistant professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Fine Arts for the academic year, 2016-2017. Panayiotis Doukanaris’ work investigates the manifestation of the materiality of painting in an attempt to show how a re-consideration and manipulation of a condition brings significant changes by expanding and overcoming categorical limits and criteria. His turn towards the nature of the material of painting is based on its fragile and vulnerable character, which allows him to manipulate it. The materiality of the painting’s surface – often the canvas – manifests the final result: the paint’s reaction, style and, finally, image. Doukanaris re-weaves, unpicks and alters the weave pattern or number of threads of the canvas in a way that the image (as first approach, which is often based on raw logic) becomes systematically altered, manipulated and finally unrecognisable. By experimenting and manipulating this condition there is potential for re-arranging the dominant position of the image-ness over the object-ness of painting. This new approach towards painting,

Goldsmiths College, London, Birkbeck, University of London Supervisors: Brian Griffiths, Andy Lowe, and Simon May

PETER ERAMIAN

an object, means that openness is maintained, allowing new elements to interact and coexist. These are taken from different categories such as installations or sculptures. In turn, this new approach has led him to consider different set ups of the paintings since the necessity of a stretcher (and its shape) is now questioned, the same goes for the wall as a par excellence type of set up for paintings. Paintings now acquire sculptural characteristics and can be viewed from all angles, flexible to adjust in different ways of set-ups in an attempt to grant the viewer with sensory information. The fragile and vulnerable character of works is highlighted, especially when they change easily, or react to the breathing of the viewer in a close-up view. Furthermore, this openness allows for dialogue and exchange between other forms of art, broadly by blurring the strict limits of identity and category, a change may occur.

+ 357 99495198 http://www.petereramian.com petereramian@gmail.com

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Peter Eramian (b.1984) studied Fine Art & History of Art at Goldsmiths College (2007) and Philosophy at Birkbeck (2009). He co-founded two magazines – Shoppinghour Magazine and The Cyprus Dossier – and is currently running the exhibition space Thkio Ppalies with artist Stelios Kallinikou. Peter Eramian’s practice develops through the creation of constellations - critical encounters of differing reference points that engage with and shift the probability distribution of cultural potentialities. Art history, pop culture and the expanse of the everyday create the conditions for a

Lives and works in Cyprus

Kingston University and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera Supervisors: Alexis Teplin and Nicoletta Braga

LENIA GEORGIOU

practice whose main tenets are collaboration, extended mediations on spaces as semantic markers of defunct oppositions and the extension of works into series.

+ 357 96586535 https://www.behance.net/LeniaGeorgiou lenia.georgiou@hotmail.com

Lenia Georgiou (b. 1990) graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts at Kingston University in 2012 and from a two-year Honours Graduate program in Art Therapy at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan in 2015. During her specialization, she worked with children, people with mental and physical disabilities, visually impaired, prisoners, immigrant women, as well as asylum seekers and political refugees. While in Milan, Georgiou cultivated her passion for dance and performance. She participated in a collective performance organized in honor of the Youth Biennale in Milan (2015), a performance with Luigi Coppolla at the Burri theatre, part of the Triennale of Milan (2016), a corporeal theatre workshop with Guillaume Pigé at Thoc Theatre, Nicosia (2016), and others. The issue of relocation accompanies Lenia Georgiou from early childhood. Her work is mostly concerned with issues of displacement, relocation, and the basic human need of shelter. She has always been in transit by choice, yet was raised on an island that was not divided by choice. Therefore, her divided homeland is the main inspiration for her artwork. She is also interested in the redefinition of borders, in the norms and elements that define an individual’s identity and is, therefore,

interested in what Pierre Bourdieu has called ‘’Àtopos’’, a hybrid person that does not have a place to return to. For Lenia Georgiou, exhibiting art in public spaces holds the memory that it carries with it, it declares itself and its values, the seeds of its own future, and that which we all hope is a future of freedom, culture and integration for all members of society.

Athens School of Fine Art Supervisor: Anastasios Christakis Lives and works in Athens, Greece

LILIA HADJIGEORGIOU

+ 30 6988579015 liliahadjigeorgiou@gmail.com

Lilia Hadjigeorgiou (b. 1986) studied Painting at Athens School of Fine Art 2005-10. In 2009, she attended the MA Painting Program at the Department of Fine Arts of Universite Paris 8 in France, having an Erasmus Scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation (GR). In (2004) she attended the Psychology Course at Athens National Kapodistrian University for an academic year having a scholarship from the Cyprus State Scholarship Foundation. She holds a diploma in acting from the Neo Elliniko Theatro G. Armenis Drama school (Athens, 2011-14). In 2016, she received an Athens School of Fine Arts scholarship for the Art residency in Mental Health Structures, Art Therapy and was selected for the introductory workshop on the art of performance by Georgia Sagri (in cooperation with documenta 14). “The fear of collapsing is indeed a collapse that one has already experienced.’’ Lilia Hadjigeorgiou’s practice questions notions related to the concept of archaeology and deconstruction- reconstruction. It deals with the contemporary human as a fragmented being and its anxiety to encounter the inevitability of death in relation to the notion of time. To negotiate these notions, she has used replicas of her body parts to reveal and confront her obsessions and fears. Inspired by archeological findings, she has created a new condition of archaeology in present time through a guileless use of materials, combined with imaginative inventions of the concept of time. This can be seen in the installation where a pile of fragments from models of her own limbs, scraps and dust of the same material, coexist with mechanical parts of a doll. The movement of these parts, mainly an anguished sound, produces a tragicomic situation of associations

Chelsea University and Nottingham Trent University Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

Developing her work, she began to research the tradition of the offerings (ex-voto) and historical monuments as a souvenir, and distorted memory. In her recent work-in-progress, she deals with wooden folding constructions which she has called “exercises of bravery”.

ISMINI HAHOLIADOU

of danger while a liberating sense of childish innocence emanates in the room. Later, Hadjigeorgiou created motorized (machine-like) sculptures. In fact, they appear as an anagram of various parts, motors, sounds and materials found in various toys (animals and dolls) accumulated mainly from flea markets. The way she recomposes them, “regenerates’’ a new kind of paradoxical and hybrid creature that constantly moves, redefining the surrounding space and trying (often in vain) to communicate with ‘’their audience’’. As, for example, the sound installation of eight types of humans breathing, and resulting from the normal and intense psychological conditions in Pafos’ archaeological museum.

+ 357 99745747 ismini316@gmail.com

Ismini Haholiadou (b. 1987) completed her BA in fine art at Chelsea University of the Arts, London in 2009 and her MA in Photography at Nottingham Trent University in 2010. She has participated in group exhibitions and has also exhibited at Phytorio Visual Arts Association, Is Not a Gallery, Argo Gallery, Katoi Art space, and Mills gallery. In 2013, Haholiadou was selected to exhibit her work at Errors Allowed – European and Mediterranean 16th Biennale of Young Artists (Italy, Ancona) and at Fabricca Del Vapore (Milano, Italy) at the group exhibition, Alternative Nomadi – Mediterranea 16. Through photographic investigation, Ismini Haholiadou attempts to critically capture the present-day Cypriot landscape, taking her cue from – although in contrast to – the work of Ioannis Kissonerghis, which dates to the first half of the 20th century. Her enquiry has yielded a series of photographs united by the allegorical element of the “lost horizon” behind “fractured mountains”. For the purposes of this photographic study, Haholiadou’s lens focuses on the areas of Dali, Tseri and Agios Sozomenos, more specifically

University for the Creative Arts, UK Supervisor: Adrian Lovis Lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus

AVRAAM HIRODONTIS

on the mountains and hills. She uses the volume of the “severed” mountains visually in order to create images that trigger speculation over a new Cypriot landscape and the sociopolitical changes linked to the morphological shifts it has endured. The new landscape arrangements take place without any reference to the past, but also without foreboding where such changes might lead. All photographs, in spite of a human absence, contain a feeling of human presence as well as human intervention.

+ 357 99136600 avraamhirodontis.wixsite.com/avraamhirodontis avraam_hirodontis@hotmail.com

Avraam Hirodontis (b. 1989), after completing his secondary education at Foley’s Grammar and Junior School, moved on to pursue his artistic interests at the University for the Creative Arts, in the UK. He graduated in 2014 after successfully receiving a BA (Hons) Fine Art. Under the guidance of professor, Adrian Lovis he broadened and developed his artistic practice in relation to the field of painting. His dissertation was titled, “The Materiality of the Grid” and was based on contemporary artistic practises and referencing 20th Century Modernist paintings.

VII

In his work, Avraam Hirodontis explores the nature of fabric in order to create compositions based purely on the textural effects created through fabric manipulation. As Clement Greenberg wrote, “absolute flatness is possible only on an empty canvas”. Given that Hirondontis’ canvases are rich with texture, they cannot be considered “empty”, despite the white colour scheme. He has chosen to create symmetrical outlines as the external form of the paintings in the shape of the square and to experiment with linear symmetry within the canvas. Painting can be defined by the materiality of the canvas and the paint. Hence, with this work, the artist questions what makes a painting because of the lack of paint used. This is done in order to emphasise the materiality of the canvas as a medium and not simply as a painting surface.

The work revolves around the mathematical equation of the surface area of a square. The variable elements of the canvases are the thickness of the canvas strips and the number of strips placed on each side of the wooden frame. This resulted in the formation of large areas of empty space within the surface, which produces a difference between the conventional idea of a canvas area and the new area created. Taking into account the tension created on the wooden frame and without altering the mathematical equation, one of the canvases is displayed as a deformed square. Both canvases are made using the same structure and yet one conforms to the boundaries of the square and the other breaks from the constraints of a rigid form.

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and IIEK ESP

STELIOS KALLINIKOU

+ 357 99824520 www.stelios-kallinikou.com stelioskallinikou@gmail.com

Stelios Kallinikou (b. 1985, Cyprus) studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, 2008, and then received a scholarship from IIEK ESP, where he studied photography. Since 2009 he has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad. His work is represented in public and private collections. He was selected for the Young Greek Photographers exhibition in 2010 and in 2013 at Athens Photo Festival. He was also nominated for the Fotomuseum Winterhur Pla(t)form in 2014. In 2016, he was selected to participate to the Equilibrists, a project organised by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation, in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens. At the same year he was nominated for PRIX PICTET award. Furthermore Kallinikou is co-founder and director of Thkio Ppalies Artist-led Project Space, based in Nicosia, Cyprus. Stelios Kallinikou is interested in how images blur the boundaries between documentary and fiction. His practice explores the intersections of space, place, time and history as manifestations of meaning. He uses photography as an exploratory medium on issues

University of Brighton, UK Supervisor: Dr. Charlie Hooker

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

DEMETRA KALLITSI

related to architecture, nature, cities, politics, society, archaeology history, and philosophy. Through his work he examines the ways in which the above themes appear in everyday life and how they construct our ideologies and mythologies.

+ 357 99779007 www.dkallitsi.com demetrakallitsi@hotmail.com

Demetra Kallitsi (b. 1989) completed an MA in Fine Arts at The University of Brighton, 2013, having as a supervisor, Professor Charlie Hooker, and a BA in Visual Arts at University of Salford, Manchester, 2012, supervised by Professor Brendan Fletcher. Kallitsi has participated in group exhibitions, artist residencies, workshops, and had solo and collaborative performances in Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Malta and the UK. Her art practice unfolds over a variety of different mediums including performance art, textiles (embroidery) and creative writing. Demetra Kallitsi’s art practice focuses on the mediums of performance art, textiles (embroidery) and creative writing. Her artwork is personal and autobiographical, where an element of exposure allows the artist to perform a sort of public catharsis. She sees art as an attempt to identify and heal the “wound”, an act of activism. Thus, the creative process challenges the artist to deviate from an egocentric comfort zone of celebrating the artist as “a romantic, tragic figure” or from being the “aestheticized object of creation”. She considers art to not only

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton Supervisors: George Tsakiris and Kyriakos Mortarakos Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

ANDRI KAPSALI

be a means of addressing certain issues (social, political, economic etc.) but also as an attempt to propose or provide solutions to those issues. Kallitsi’s artwork addresses issues of identity (the discourses that influence and transform it), the individual’s notion of reality (and how this is always transformed/based on past experiences, social and cultural background, and previously attained knowledge). Further references can be drawn from issues of gender politics, memory and humour.

+ 357 99811221 andri_kapsali@hotmail.com

Andri Kapsali (b. 1986) completed her studies at the School of Visual and Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the University of Southampton (MA Fine Arts). Her work has been presented in a number of group exhibitions, including CHEAPART (2015) and the 6th Annual Exhibition of Young Cypriot Artists (2012). Collecting objects from everyday life, discarded, and junk material is important to Andri Kapsali’s work. Objects that carry meaning from different times of her life play a significant role. She captures a moment and keeps it as an art piece, remembering something from it. It’s impossible for her art to be separated from life. Another important aspect is the contrast between the materials that she uses, like palettes and, generally, three-dimensional pieces of wood in various dimensions, strict shapes and exact constructions that are combined with the variety of materials which she collects (clothes, personal artifacts, cotton, newspaper, etc.). The use of “weak

materials” on the strong structure of wood is an expression of unique contrast between them, in order to show tension, another significant aspect of how Kapsali works. By compressing them and inserting them in spaces inside the wood, or filling wooden boxes, she accomplishes another desirable result. By means of this process, thoughts and feelings of pressure, and fear of being vulnerable and fragile, materialize through the items she uses. Using old and destroyed pieces of wood combined with new materials, she rephrases them, like the past in the present.

VIII

De Montfort University, Leicester, UK Lives and works in Pafos, Cyprus

STELLA KARAGEORGI

+ 357 99216088 www.stellakarageorgi.com stellakarageorgi@hotmail.com

Stella Karageorgi (b. 1984) studied Fine Art and Art History at the University of Texas in 2001-2005. In 2005 she continued her postgraduate studies at St. Martins College of Art & Design in London and later at the University of Northampton. In 2013, Karageorgi completed her doctoral studies in Fine Art Practice at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. She currently operates her private art studio in Pafos, Cyprus and offers talks & workshops, as well as consultation in matters related to bridging heritage & archaeology through contemporary art and life. Stella Karageorgi is interested in the exploration of prehistoric art and identifying artistic ideas behind ancient symbols, motifs and archetypal themes, implementing these principles in the production of contemporary art. The artist’s main aim is to explore new ways of interpreting the past, to recreate ancient art and transform it into something new: a new art form that is relevant to a 21st century

Athens School of Fine Art & Royal College of Art, London Supervisor: Jordan Baseman Lives and works in London and Athens

LITO KATTOU

audience of different values and belief systems. The essence of her art and research is to link past and present through recreation. Karageorgi also investigates the common fundamentals and parallels of ancient art and children’s art and toys. She works in various mediums, such as painting, sculpture, installation and digital art.

+ 44 7492416140 www.litokattou.com kattou.lito@gmail.com

Lito Kattou (b. 1990) graduated from the Athens School of Fine Art in 2013 and the Royal College of Art, London, with an MA in Sculpture in 2017. Recent shows include: “And if I left of dreaming about you?” curated by L.A.L.D, Foothold, Bari; “It looks like up to me” Eleni koroneou, Athens; “Fighting with the Sun” (solo), Clearview.ltd, London; “Solar love for the Rapid Felines” (solo), Pierre Poumet, Bordeaux, France; “The Equilibrists”, New Museum, NY in collaboration with DESTE Foundation, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; “Handsome, Young and Unemployed”, KOMPLOT, Brussels, Belgium. Lito Kattou develops constellations of sculptural works, produced in dialogue with writing. Part of an emergent continuum of production, the artworks negotiate understandings of materiality and subjectivity through a composition of practices, spanning from digital fabrication to thermochemical elaborations. Articulated as weapons, skins, or cosmic elements, Kattou’s works engage with the sculptural potentiality of flatness, processes of embodiment and the transfigurations of material properties within the margins of space and time. Her practice talks about what comes before and after the body, the possibility of its presence and absence, its representation and its abstraction. In the plot of Kattou’s

Athens School of Fine Arts Supervisor: Triantafyllos Patraskidis Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

MARIA KOFTEROU

texts, subjectivation is understood as a series of tactics for the production and conditioning of the self and other. The subject is presented as a wanderer, transcending identity and categorization: a composition of voices shifting equivocally between dialogue and monologue. Space, form and narrative are structured around traces left from acts of attack and defence, modes of roaming, and intimate communication. Finally, the erratic back and forth movement expressed between writing and sculptural practice becomes, for Kattou, an environment for aesthetic contemplation.

+ 357 99684110 www.aimtheforeststudio.blogspot.com aimtheforestudio@gmail.com

Maria Kofterou (b. 1986) studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts and obtained a BA in 2009. In 2016 she received a BA in philosophy at the University of Cyprus. Her work was featured in exhibitions, including, ‘The work of art as a functional object, part II’ in 2013, group show at the Centre of Contemporary Art Diatopos, Nicosia. She had a solo show on crystallography at Phaneromenis 70, Nicosia in 2015. In 2017, she participated in the group exhibition, ‘Lefkara lace: modi and modulations’ at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, organized by the Cyprus National Commission for Unesco.

Maria Kofterou is interested in the scientific dimension of drawing as a means to understand the natural world. Working mostly with ink, she makes reference and experiments with modes of representation from the traditions of illustration and engraving with a focus on a kind of ambiguity. This ambiguity, sometimes intentional and other times accidental, is developed by interpreting themes from nature, philosophy, tradition, and history, and is made visible by creating, at times, diametrically opposite connotations that coexist on the same surface.

In relation to historical themes, she focuses on things that seem to be forgotten and go through a process of researching, re-stipulating and therefore, preserving. Preservation is a recurring theme in Maria Kofterou’s work: it entails keeping a tradition alive by bringing it to present day or creating a specimen of sorts. For a particular series, intimate landscape ink drawings are enclosed into glass and bronze foil boxes, making reference to childhood objects of adoration, souvenirs, and processes of remembrance.

Lives and works in Larnaca, Cyprus and Utrecht, The Netherlands

Alexander College and UWE Bristol, Larnaca/UK Supervisors: Aggela Kyriacou and Alexandros Kyriakides

IOANNIS KOUZAPAS

+ 357 99979541 www.reapok.blogspot.com ioankouz1994@gmail.com

Ioannis Kouzapas (b. 1994) started his career as a graffiti artist and didn’t consider himself an artist, at first. He received a scholarship from Alexander College/ UWE Bristol in 2013 to attend the (BA) Fine Art Course. During his studies, he became aware of the art world and slowly started becoming a part of it. He developed skills in a variety of materials, as each project guides the artist through materials most suitable for it. Kouzapas graduated from Alexander College/UWE Bristol in July 2016. He has participated in a few group exhibitions and graffiti festivals, as well as assisted with curating several. As a creative individual, Ioannis Kouzapas works flexibly with materials as well as projects and concepts. He attempts to follow a variety of projects as to understand the world better. He believes that each concept has its own material spectrum, allowing the project to guide him through his materials in order to bring the best out of it. He has experimented with pencil, pen, charcoal, coal, acrylic paint, spray paint, clay, plaster, wax, wood, glass, carving, ready- made materials, and basic photography. His projects revolve around the social part of life, the relationships between people and how they exteriorize

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus Supervisor: Vicky Pericleous

VICTORIA LEONIDOU

their emotions. Consequently, he works with the psychological states certain individuals go through by trying to record them. Furthermore, he works with impressions, sketching places he visits. He records the impression these places leave, although another person might draw the same place from the same angle in an entirely different way. This is an individual perspective and it works with smell, taste, the senses, in general, leading to unique artworks. By looking into this philosophy, Kouzapas tries to show individuality, as he believes it is buried today since everyone is trying to imitate someone else.

+ 357 96848486 victoria@menta.com.cy

Victoria Leonidou (b. 1982) completed her MA dissertation with her supervisor, Vicky Pericleous, obtaining in 2016 an MA in Fine Art: Contemporary Art Practices with distinction from the School of Architecture, Fine and Applied Arts at Frederick University. Selected exhibitions include: “Literacy-Illiteracy”, Tallinn Print Triennial, 2014; “Subjective maps/ disappearances”, KUMU, Tallinn, Estonia, 2013, “Disorder”, National Gallery of Iceland, 2012, WEYA, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, 2012, “The landing place. Humanity Work Migrants”, Nottingham, 2012, and participation in the European Biennial of Young Artists, “Mediterranea 15”, Thessaloniki, 2011. “Nothing disappears completely ... In space, what came earlier continues to underpin what follows ... Pre-existing space underpins not only durable spatial arrangements, but also representational spaces and their attendant imagery and mythic narratives.” - Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Born in the early 80’s in the Soviet Union makes Victoria Leonidou part of the last generation who grew up behind the iron curtain. Although the former USSR’s hegemonic narratives and sovereign language are no longer viable, their symbolic authority are still sensed or rather embedded in the country’s present collective memory. Her research and practical work proposes and stages Spaces that examine the nature of questions around the post-Soviet, in open-ended readings, within the current

sociopolitical context. It reflects upon the fragilities of these ambiguous territories – historical, spatial, mental, social and geographical – that have opened up since the collapse, and investigates, through a series of works, their currency today. Questions are raised as to how these excessive mnemonics could, when aroused within an art context, reconstitute or shape spaces of negotiation in the quest for a post-Soviet identity. How might these spaces appear? Tensions, in respect to context and materiality, expose uncertainties and irregularities, but at the same time, point out to new possibilities and readings.

Athens School of Fine Art and Royal College of Art, London Supervisors: Tasos Christakis and Dick Jewell Lives and works in London

ANASTASIA MINA

+ 44 7510898430 www.anastasiamina.com anastasiamina2@gmail.com

Anastasia Mina (b. 1986) graduated from the Athens School of Fine Art (2005-10) with a Diploma in Painting and completed an MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, London (2012-14). Selected exhibitions: Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale, Tirana (2017), Florence Trust Summer Show, London (2017), syn[chrono]sides, Hellenic Centre, London (2017), Artificial Memories, DepoDarm Contemporary Art Space, Athens (2016), Typography as an artistic act 1900-1980, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2016), Arte Laguna Prize, Nappe Arsenale, Venice (2016), Impact9 International Print Biennale, Renke Art Gallery, Hangzhou, China (2015), Open West 2015. She received the A.G Leventis Foundation Educational Grant (2012/2013), the Royal College of Art Fund Support (2012), the Fine Art Bursaries Award RCA (2014) and was selected for the Florence Trust Residency Programme (2016-17). Anastasia Mina uses screen-printing, drawings and found photographic images to produce works that are full of references, from the historical and the political to the personal and from the specific to the ambiguous. Photographic sources function as the starting point in order to transform images by changing their scale or changing the medium so that one can’t look at them in an easy way, thus, refusing a penetrating gaze. By manually re-editing the found material (covering,

Coventry University, UK Supervisor: Richard Dawkins Lives and works in Cyprus

PANAGIOTIS MINA

erasing or obscuring it through labor intensive techniques), she aims to dismantle an image’s content and redirect or reclaim its meaning. Her transformations are impulse driven, not in a pursuit of truth or a need to correct the image. She invents and applies her own rules and formulas often based on a rational derivation from elements within the image itself. This rationality is applied throughout her process as a guideline for ‘undoing’ the image.

+ 357 97742093 panagiotis.mina@gmail.com

Panagiotis Mina (b. 1982) completed a BA in Communication Culture and Media supervised by professor Richard Dawkins at Coventry University in the UK, and graduated in 2005. Since 2006, he has been working as a freelance photographer and videographer for various commissions, and as an audio-visual artist. He has presented his work in solo shows and collaborative projects. Panagiotis Mina is interested in noise and interruption within cultural norms. Using photography, video and sound, he explores the ability of different platforms to accept the inevitability of their demise and either create an alternative world using a similar discourse or mock the existing ones. An example of how he does this is through a video in which he which he commissioned himself as an audiovisual producer to create an advertisement for himself as an artist. The video starts

École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon & Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg Supervisors: Bernhardt Rüdiger, Pia Stadtbäumer & Michael Diers

ELENI MOUZOUROU

with him stating how “when art speaks you keep silent and listen”. In a collaborative project in which the austerity of sound sculptures created by his fellow artist prevailed, he placed a metal tube in the vast space as if coming from the ground, and where you could listen to hotline bling from inside. His latest project is a conceptual musical album where he imagines finding a box of recorded music from a mysterious stranger.

+ 49 1637944036 www.elenimouzourou.net emouzourou@gmail.com

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Eleni Mouzourou (b. 1983) studied Visual Arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2002-2005) and continued her studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (2006-2009). Mouzourou is currently enrolled in the Art Therapy MA program at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Her recent exhibitions and project participations include: Poetry Exercises: An Archive of (un)familiar Things, Institute for City History, Frankfurt a. M., 2016, A line began, Tête, Berlin, 2015, Park in progress: Nuit Européenne de la jeune creation, Nicosia, 2014. Eleni Mouzourou’s practice is particularly concerned with the physical and mental experience of limits and territoriality. An underlying theme in the framework is the exploration of the line and imprint as physical traces and narrative elements. Traces in the space of a drawing, frontiers as lines drawn on a map or boundaries of psychological nature are thereby reflected as possibly interrelated fields of tension.

Working in various media including drawing, installation and participatory actions, Mouzourou currently focuses on developing processes of mapping micro-territories by combining experiential and scientific modes of observation. Her recent project “Memo-garden”, for example, mapped the area of Nicosia’s municipal garden by meticulously documenting its plants. Approached as a multilayered living archive, the garden appeared, in this way, as a site where an invisible story of displaced people and plants could surface on a very small scale.

nowwhat

nowwhat is a collective that manages and curates the website ‘nowwhat.com.cy’. The aim of this team is to provide an accessible international online platform where people can show their artworks, a place open to discussions between people and artists involved, and to explore various digital mediums. Their intention is to communicate common reflections with a critical eye through the medium of art, people, society, the environment, etc. This platform aspires to give impetus and space for dialogue between artists, participating artists and the public. Posing the question ‘nowwhat’, the team launched their first project called ‘σκυτάλη’ (skitali) in an attempt to explore the prospects of an online digital platform. AGGELA CHIMONA University of Wolverhampton/ University of the Arts London, Wimbledon College Supervisors: Andy Hewitt, Mel Jordan and Jordan Baseman

+ 357 99991756 www.nowwhat.com.cy aggela@nowwhat.com.cy

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Aggela Chimona (b. 1986) studied Fine art in the UK, acquiring a BA (Hons) in 2007 from the University of Wolverhampton and an MA in Sculpture in 2008 from University of the Arts London/ Wimbledon College. She co-founded nowwhat.com.cy in 2016 with Eleni Skoulia and Chrisanthy Christoforou.

Her research focuses on identity narratives, working mainly with video and sound, allowing her to process and edit material, reflecting the way the brain treats and processes memories. Chimona is interested in why people choose to narrate and present themselves the way they do often at the expense of truthfulness in story-telling.

CHRISANTHY CHRISTOFOROU Wolverhampton University and University of the Arts London, Wimbledon College Supervisors: Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt

+ 357 99518594 chrisanthy@nowwhat.com.cy

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Chrisanthy Christoforou (b. 1986) received a BA (HONS) degree in Fine Art and Glass from Wolverhampton University in 2007 and graduated with an MA in Fine Art Sculpture from University of the Arts LondonWimbledon College of Art in 2008. She attended workshops in cultural

management and in curating internet-based art. She works primarily with video art, and is co-founder of the website www.nowwhat.com.cy with Aggela Chimona and Eleni Skoulia. She has participated in several group exhibitions and festivals.

ELENI SKOULIA + 357 99682431 skouliae@gmail.com

University of the Arts London Supervisor: Jordan Baseman Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus Eleni Skoulia (b.1986) is Head of the Arts Department at PASCAL English School and Greek school in Lefkosia. She studied Fine art in the UK, acquiring a BA (Hons) in 2007 from the University of Wolverhampton and an MA in Sculpture in 2008 from University of the Arts London,

Lives and works in Cyprus

Athens School of Fine Art Supervisor: Giannis Psychopaidis

ANTHI PAFIOU

Wimbledon College. Her work revolves around the question of how we create meaning and perception. She co-founded nowwhat.com.cy in 2016 with Aggela Chimona and Chrisanthy Christoforou.

+ 357 97745129 https://anthipafiou.wordpress.com an8ii@yahoo.gr

Anthi Pafiou (b. 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist. She completed the BA program of Contemporary Dance at the University of Nicosia. Later she graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts. She has exhibited in galleries and alternative spaces in Spain, Greece and Cyprus, and collaborated with artists from various fields and experimental groups. The last years Pafiou researches the benefits of art to society through remaining in the “present moment”. She has also collaborated with scientists from different fields, approaching the equal role of art and science. She participated in the “Young Artists Biennale/Milano 2015” with the performance piece “And Here we are” and has been selected by International Expo to exhibit in Venice and Argentina. Anthi Pafiou expresses curiosity in ways to discover herself and be able to communicate her thoughts and perspective on society. This brought her to the realization that art as a simple depiction of nature or personal experience has a vital meaning as an expressive tool of beauty, although it cannot generate conditions of consciousness in everyday life. Researching ways in which art can be more valuable to the individual, as a being of multiple functions, like cognitive function, and to society, as a problematic environment, Pafiou approaches the equal role of art and science in her artistic research, “Remaining in the present moment”. The purpose of this research is to reconsider the

temporal instance of now through ephemeral conditions. Negotiating with an audience through an experimental communication model, the goal is to co-create present-time moments. The methodology used combines artistic and scientific tools through collaborations with psychologists, physicists, performers, and artists. In an additional series of paintings and performances, for example, the project, “Double F”, Anthi Pafiou deals with political issues.

XII

De Montfort University, UK Supervisor: Ben Carpenter Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

NICOLETA-ELEONORA PAGDATI

+ 357 99908835 n.e.pagdati@gmail.com http://nepagdati.wixsite.com/home

Nicoleta-Eleonora Pagdati (b. 1995) has been encouraged to view the arts and creative expression as a means of selfactualisation. After winning the first prize at a European Art competition at the age of 11, her journey to the world of Art started. Studying abroad has not only allowed her to meet people from all over the world but also to travel and to learn about cultures. She has just completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, specialising in sculpture and installation. This summer she will graduate from De Montfort University, UK. A direct interaction with the natural environment during Pagdati’s childhood years has shaped her relationship and perception of the world. Her work explores the notion of existence in a poetic nature, enriched with mysterious, enigmatic and philosophical undertones. As a multidisciplinary artist she is interested in the point where nature and culture intersect. Intuition and playfulness are vital in the creative process, where there is room for experimentation, observation and learning. Thought, action and emotion are equally influential factors for creation. Working mainly with found materials allows her to alter their

form and function, redefining them. The process, as well as the work itself, is a means to understand the complexities of the human psyche in relation to the world and that eternal universe we call home. Pagdati’s artistic practice is an ongoing mission for unrestrained expression fuelled by curiosity and wonder. Creative development acts mainly as a cathartic process both for the objects and the artist, arising from an urge to fuse imagination with substance.

EVI PALA University of Kent and University of the West of England Supervisor: Alexandros Kyriakides Lives and works in Larnaca, Cyprus

+ 357 96437054 evipalas@gmail.com

Evi Plala (b.1992) completed her studies in History and Philosophy of Art in 2013, at the University of Kent. She continued her studies and completed a second degree in Fine Arts at the University of the West of England, Alexander College, in 2016, where she received the Graduate of the Year award for outstanding performance. In 2015, she organized and managed ‘Girl Rising Charity Art exhibition’ at Apothikes art space in Larnaca. Ancient Cypriot art in combination with the recent political corruption taking place is the platform which Evi Pala’s work is based on. It consists of objects assumedly from the island’s past. The pseudo-historical series does not deviate aesthetically from the familiar ancient artifacts already found, and could easily fit in a museum gallery. Her work “slips into” Cypriot history as if it belongs there. By taking something that already exists and construing it to fit a different context, she mirrors a collective social structure in Cyprus that attempts to create “legacy” for itself. The work contributes to the active development of a “legacy” but ultimately questions what makes it and gives it value. The attempt to use the grandeur of the past and its history to build the current image of the island is simply ludicrous, after experiencing events of the recent years. Laying open an artifact and presenting it as a historical “‘truth-teller”’, simultaneously is an attempt to explore its past identity

in relation to the present. With a specific focus on her hometown Pafos, having recently been defamed with multiple political scandals, is used as an example of corrupted political behaviour on the island. Evi Pala constructs narratives through traditional means, by recording obscurities of recent political history and current events, mockingly “historicizing” them. Certain occurrences and/or people significant to the image, “legacy” and identity of her hometown, ultimately formulate an overall image of contemporary Cyprus. Her art expresses an overall criticism of the absurdities of these recent events, revealing how little they have in common with the pinnacles of the past. By folding the historical and cultural image of the island on itself, and recording it at the same time, the work explores the “in-between” phenomenon of the island stuck amongst the past and present.

Department of Visual and Applied Arts, School of Fine arts, University of Western Macedonia, Florina Assistant professor: Yiannis Kastritsis Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

ALEXANDRA PAMBOUKA

+ 357 96378851 alexandrapamb@gmail.com

Alexandra Pambouka (b. 1993) studied at the University of West Macedonia in the Department of Visual and Applied Arts. She has presented work in various group shows, including MERAK(i) project at the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels (2016) and Mediterranean Bodies at Romantzo in Athens (2016). She has been in an ERASMUS+ Traineeship in Basketry and Fibre Crafts at Basketry and Beyond LTD, UK.

XIV

After various experimentations with techniques and materials, Alexandra Pampouka ended up dealing with natural or recycled materials and using traditional techniques so that she can act and work without causing permanent damage to the natural environment.

Pampouka is also influenced by the freely-scribbles of D. Kontos and Cy Towmbly, art brut, fiber art, enviromental art, arte povera and performance for material selection, and perceptions about nature, and applying chance and accident to the making process.

She has been exposed to the field of basket making in the UK (workshops, symposium, craft fairs) and has returned to Cyprus to discover the local plant weaving techniques. With these techniques she creates more compact and resistable forms. Her aim is not to reproduce the traditional symmetrical motives but to use them in a more expressionistic way by keeping a rhythm and flow.

She believes that folk art should remain active and be ethical, enriched with elements of modern society. Due to modernization and industrialization, many skills and knowledge vital to humanity, from agriculture to handicraft, have been lost. In the past, folk art was inextricably associated with society, it was a way of life. Nowadays, contemporary art addresses a concrete audience. Contemporary and folk art may work together so that art plays a crucial role in public space.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts, Frederick University, Nicosia Supervisors: Kyriakos Katzourakis and Panayiotis Michael Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

MICHELE PADELI

+ 357 99870543 www.michellepadeli.com michelle.padeli@gmail.com

Michelle Padeli (b. 1988) holds an MA in Fine Arts: Contemporary Art Practices from Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus. She holds a degree of the School of Visual and Applied Arts of the faculty of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Selected group exhibitions include: collaboration with pick nick, (2015); “Rambling Forms”, The Museums of the Pancyprian Gymnasium. Residency: EI.KA at Phytorio, Nicosia,Cyprus (July - August 2016). Michelle Padeli works with the concept of liquidity. On the basis of her own experiential reality and given the liquidity of this era, she tries to interpret this concept. The green water container was the cause of personal, rational and practical expression. During the beginning stages of her research, she studied the substance of water, and her experimentation focused on its natural characteristics. In the process, her conjectural study started to search for more notional interpretations.

The history and geology of Cyprus is the basis of her research, which now focuses on handling the liquidity of water, as it is contained or channelled through or into an object. A recurring element in her work, the idea of water may be connected to the fact that water is scarce in her country. Initially, she grounded her research around the green water container, which is used for transferring water and is widely used in Cyprus. Even though water has been the main tool and means of expression in most of her work, its usage as a liquid element is a pre-existing matter focusing on transparency.

SOPHIA PAPACOSTA Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts University of Brighton Supervisors: Kyriakos Mortarakos and Margaret Huber Lives and works in Athens, Greece

+30 6942448360 www.sophiapapacosta.com sofipaco@yahoo.gr

Sophia Papacosta (b. 1985) studied Visual Arts at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University and holds an MA in Illustration and Sequential Design from the University of Brighton. She has had two solo shows, in 2013 (Between the lines, at Zoumboulakis Galleries Athens) and in 2012 (Tangles, Melanythros, Athens) and has participated in various group shows. Throughout the artistic practice of Sophia Papacosta, she explores notions such as memory, intimacy, and degeneration, personal and social boundaries. Drawing has, so far, been her main medium. A main concern of her work revolves around the perception of time, which she tends to approach through different paths. Her current body of work is interested in exploring “memory” and how its experience

can be evoked through drawing. Her process involves drawing, erasing and redrawing on the same piece of paper. Through this process she attempts to defragment a given image and then draw her experience and memory of it, over it. The recurrent layers of drawings added, symbolize the ravages of time. Finally, the arduousness of this process explores a personal need to redefine time itself.

Middlesex University Supervisor: Katerina Apostolidou Lives and works in Greece and Cyprus

ANDREAS PAPAMICHAEL

+ 30 6946583794 www.andreaspapamichael.com andreas_papamichael@hotmail.com

Andreas Papamichael (b. 1992) studied for one year at the University of Barcelona at Facultad de Bellas Artes in 2011. His completed his B.A Degree in Fine Art and New Media at Middlesex University during his three-year degree at AKTO College of Art in Athens. His work has been presented in various exhibitions in Athens and Cyprus. This year he had his first solo exhibition at Booze Cooperativa Base Gallery in Athens. This September he is going to pursue post-graduate studies in Art, Space and Nature at Edinburgh College of Art for two years. Through the artistic practice of Andreas Papamichael, he explores and collects, carries, rearranges and alters rocks, fossils, lichens, fungus, soil and tree bark, all of which carry ravages of time. Through his arrangements of these findings and manipulations which offer the viewer an alternative perspective and pace with which to consider nature – as they wander through created environments – primordial questions are raised about death, chance, rebirth, and regeneration. He explores and creates through observing the cycle of life and the diptych of nature. More specifically, Papamichael hones in on considering the study of natural phenomenon through erosion and reconstruction while reflecting on the meaning of existence (ύπαρξης) and questioning the meaning of life (νόημα της ζωής). “Disintegrations” is a multidimensional on-going project which explores nature and its phenomena. The artist collects bitter oranges growing on trees on the streets of Athens then gathers them in my studio and explores arrangements which allow him to observe and manipulate the conditions of their disintegration. Ultimately, the process of disintegration is an influential factor in the development and conservation of order and harmony.

The last year, Papamichael’s work focuses on activities in public spaces, either by an immediate involvement of onlookers or by activating urban spaces or points of natural environment. “Feast of sowing’’ looks at how Greece’s economic breakdown has demolished many formerly lively spaces in the centre of Athens, creating inactive urban voids. It takes the role of a platform aiming to activate the public’s participation and to bring life back to areas, such as Omonoia Square. For “Sterquilinus’’, Andreas Papamichael has organized tree planting events in open neglected spaces in collaboration with local communities and groups, combining his artistic and environmental prepossessions. Planting not only aims at creating verdure but also to motivate people to take collective action and thought, and to help develop environmental sensitivity.

Chelsea College of Art and Design, and Royal College of Art Lives and works in London, UK

YORGOS PETROU

+ 44 757631839 www.georgepetrou.com g.pd.petrou@gmail.com

Yorgos Petrou (b. 1981) has participated in group shows: Planetes, Pafos (2017) curated by Elena Parpa; Electric Blue, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo (2016) curated by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes; Identalterity, 5th Biennale of Thessaloniki (2015) curated by Dimitris Michalaros, Anthi Argyriou, and Panagis Koutsokostas; Jonny, Insitu Space for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015) curated by Gilles Neiens, Lauren Reid, Marie Graftieaux, and Nora Mayr; Parlour Symbolique: Freud and Eros, Freud Museum, London (2015); Modern Art Oxford Shorts Program (2011); Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2011) ICA, London. Petrou holds an M.A in Photography, Royal College of Art, (2011) and a B.A Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, (2008). Yorgos Petrou’s practice seeks to examine and analyze geological strata, political and historical events, and to “excavate” elements that it then manipulates, displaces, photographs, and re-photographs to compose imagery that both contributes and responds to the understanding of the contemporary identity of a place. Landmarks (2016), for example, is a series of works constructed by layering reflective surfaces and manipulating prints, photographed in a studio and on site. The juxtaposition of image and object aims to explore the appropriation of specific places by personal, cultural, and political discourses. It deals with what connects individuals to those places and how they become sites of memory, legend, and trauma.

University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual and Applied Arts and the Athens School of Fine Arts Supervisors: Giannis Psychopaidis and Marios Spiliopoulos Lives and works in Cyprus

ELENI PHYLA

In this conceptual context, the artist also looks at the human body mythologically, culturally, physically, and emotionally. By displacing and abstracting it, the work investigates how it relates to land, and how it can become a site of individuality, hybridization, sacrifice, heroism, trauma, and dichotomy. Petrou uses photography and sculpture to address aspects of individual and national identity embodied in the landscape, and formed in relation to the geological strata of a place.

+ 357 99592168 www.eleniphyla.wordpress.com www.cretebyphyla.wordpress.com eleni.phyla@gmail.com

Eleni Phyla (b. 1988) studied Fine Arts at the Thessaloniki School of Visual and Applied Arts in 2007-2009. In 2015 she graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts. Between 2011-2012 she was part of the Erasmus programme in Paris at École National Supèrieure des Beaux Arts at the studio of Claude Closky and Emmanuel Saulnier. Ιn 2017 she worked in art education for the European School of Education of Heraklion, Greece. Eleni Phyla’s work has a conceptual orientation and takes different forms, from materialisation to new media. Her artistic practice, in general, is focussed on concepts. Her principle when working is to use liberally any medium or media, which, in effect, will help convey individual ideas. She often appreciates more basic ways of expression, which translate into pencil on paper.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School Of Visual and Applied Arts Supervisor: George Skylogiannis Lives and works In Nicosia, Cyprus

SPYROS PROCOPIOU

Phyla tries to keep concepts simple so that they can be easily understood, and can eventually give to the project a dimension that has a capacity for further interpretations. She is intrigued by pop culture and likes to observe it and outline its paradoxes. Her capacity to interpret situations from, at first glance, a simplistic yet poetic/humorous spectrum has, at times, pushed the boundaries of what is or isn’t considered to be art. Her work often develops in correspondence with an exhibition’s environment, be it a gallery or public space.

+ 357 22813260 & + 357 99035505 spyros.procopiou@gmail.com

Spyros Procopiou (b. 1990) joined the department of Visual and Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2011 and obtained a BFA degree in 2016. His main study field was drawing and painting with professor George Skylogiannis, assistant professor Evaggelia Nomidou, and professor Christos Venetis. Procopiou was accepted at the Art Department of Drawing of the New York Academy in addition to being awarded the President’s Scholarship for an MFA degree in 2017. He has participated in several group exhibitions and his artwork can be found in private and public collections. He primarily works with pencil and charcoal.

XVI

Spyros Procopiou’s work begins at the “thin line” that defines death and eroticism, in all its magnitude, by the body as a benchmark. The research is based on deformity, “illness”, human experimentation and post-war data, based on a particular research field that changes from the embodiment of the subject to the acceptance of personal information. Forms entangled, mixed up, sometimes interlaced and sometimes alone, shape the composition of the surface as intangible entities of an absent space. The subconscious consolidation of human beings – anthropocentric drawings – has led to teratogen creations, where the integration of innocence together with the ugliness of a teratogenic form turned out to be the main theme of his work. The impersonal process of research has been converted to the personal. Finding photographic

documentary for the negotiation of personal concerns was the core of Procopiou’s artistic intervention. Pictures indicating death, decay and corruption was the beginning of a process, which, like fate, had an inner need to answer experiential and empirical questions. Pencil, charcoal, chalk form the illusion of a shadow that integrates shapes and hides characters’ stories. The element of transparency through the black and white materiality of his artistic pieces is important for the puzzle that is completed slowly, yet again dissolved into thousands of thoughts. The stagnation of the forms with the artist’s life experiences, record his personal concerns in order to free him to connect with the viewer as well as himself.

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London

NAYIA SAVVA

+ 357 96357857 savvanayia@gmail.com

Nayia Savva (b. 1987) completed her studies in drawing at the Camberwell College of Arts in 2015. In 2012 she had her first show, AAHOOOH-GAH a hornlike sound signifying the end of the world, at ‘Konteiner’ in Limassol, and in 2017 she had her second show, LFE, a curatorial project hosted by the artist-run space, ‘Neoterismoi Toumazou’. Recent group shows include: So close yet so far away, 2017, curated by Yiannis Toumazis at Petah Tikvah Museum of Art, Tel Aviv and AyeBaDome: Super, 2016, curated by Peter Eramian, Thkio Ppallies, artist-run Space, Nicosia. Nayia Savva’s earlier work was concerned with creating narratives through abstraction. She explored these with systems of repetition and alternation applied to grids and self-reference, mainly through drawing and sculpture. Her latest work, L.F.E took place in an apartment in Nicosia and also included work from friends (some of whom happen to be artists). It used narrative and curating to bring to the fore questions concerning domestic settings and cohabitation with art pieces, through the story of a painting that was received as a gift. In L.F.E, objects are

University of Sussex, UK Supervisor: Sally Jane Norman Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

MARIA SPIVAK

dynamic characters, each with a different personality. Furthermore, this work explored practices of collecting, displaying and decorating in relation to friendship and gift-giving. Another recent work by Savva is Hi, published by Radical Reading (Petros Morris and Evangelia Ledaki) in the form of an ebook. Hi and L.F.E both narrate everyday thoughts and questions of the same character, that always remain unanswered.

+ 357 99 778614 mspivak567@gmail.com

Maria Spivak (b. 1989) received an MA in Creative Media Practice (Sound Environments) at the University of Sussex, having Sally Jane Norman as her main supervisor. She also received a BA in architecture at DeMontfort University. She has presented work at Short Psalm and has collaborated in exhibitions at Volks (2015) and BYOB at Phytorio (2016), while also presenting music and sound pieces at various environments. Maria Spivak works with sound and music. Her music project began in 2015 when she became interested in synthesis and pop songwriting, using a variety of electronic apparatus as her main instruments. Her research into sound began earlier in 2011 when she was studying Sound Environments at the University of Sussex, Sally Jane Norman being her main instructor. Having completed a BA in architecture, her work revolves around the notion of spatial acoustics and psychoacoustics, when she began studying sound as a cultural phenomenon, from an an-

University of Manchester Alexander College, Larnaca, Cyprus Supervisors: Alexandros Kyriakides and Aggela Kyriacou Lives and works in Larnaca, Cyprus

ARIANA STEFANI

thropological point of view. Her practice with sound involves the use of large reverberating halls, largely a fascination with cathedrals, and the manipulation of recorded sounds in such spaces to form and compose her own electroacoustic sound pieces. At a latter stage, she became interested in capturing the essence of her productions within a physical form and thus began working with material, such as copper and iron to create sound sculptures.

+ 357 99136373 ariana-stefani@hotmail.com

Ariana Stefani (b. 1992) graduated from the American Academy in Larnaca in 2011 and then studied at the University of Manchester, getting a degree in BSc (Hons) Management (Human Resources). Once she returned to Cyprus in 2014, she studied BA (Hons) Fine Art for three years at Alexander College (University of the West of England), graduating in 2017. Two of her main professors at Alexander College were Alexandros Kyriakides and Aggela Kyriakou. The art of Ariana Stephani is informed by, and emerges from, places where social, cultural, political and domestic issues intersect. She uses her work as a tool for exploring, investigating, connecting and questioning our current and historical, socio-political framework and the ways in which we behave within the framework. Ariana Stephani’s aim is to provoke dialogue around these issues by making work that provides viewers with the opportunity to approach them from a different perspective.

She creates installations through the appropriation and reinterpretation of objects and their histories, and aims to alter the viewer’s perception of ordinary materials as a way of reconsidering their assumptions of what these materials represent. Through this, the artist attempts to show connections, which are not obvious, creating a social commentary that potentially illustrates cultural practices or better yet opens these up to question. Ultimately, Stephani wishes to attract people to the ideas behind her work, to the theories she provides to support these ideas, the symbolic content of the design and its sculptural quality.

XVII

KORALLIA STERGIDES Central Saint Martins, London Lives and works between London and Nicosia

+ 44 7568515122 korallia@stergides.com http://korallia.co.uk

Korallia Stergides (b.1993) studied BA Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London between September 2012-July 2016. She participated in the emerging artist development course at Chisenhale Art Studios, ‘Into The Wild’, October 2016-October 2017; and, a Research Residency with The Natural History Museum, April 2017-August 2017. Awards include a shortlist for The Bloomberg Contemporaries 2017, The Deans Award For Excellence, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, 2017, The Sustainability Award for Art and Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, 2013. Collaborations include: The London Sinfonietta Orchestra, The British Film Institute, Rambert Dance, The Institute Of Contemporary Art, Chisenhale Gallery and Random Acts Channel 4. From an expanding archive of voice, body, found object and text, Korallia Stergides creates fiction out of fragments to make playful discoveries through live and mediated spaces. Spontaneous experiments are collated into an archive; this is a trace of process as well as a product in its own right. Content is used to progress research and recycled as memory in eventual works. In her most recent film, ‘Whale For An Ear’, the artist forms an abstract representation of the ocean to unearth the poetics of home. Using her father, an amateur magician and Northern Cypriot refugee, she takes apart the process of rendering a relic alongside the act of a magic trick to excavate micro narratives in scaled out measurements of faux fossils.

Stergides explores the term utterance in relation to her concept of ‘the third body’ as the trace of a relationship in an exchange, by creating a parity in differences. Forms of hyper collage and editing become gateways between the Macrocosm and Microcosm of liminal spaces sieving autobiographical narrative and ecological fact to create new myth. By interweaving influences across disciplines, Korallia Stergides extends her choices of collaboration and remoulds frameworks of experimental methodology that adhere to interruption and allow for a process-led practice.

CHRISTINA SYMEOU University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK, and MA Digital Art and Design, University of Nicosia (2017-19) Supervisors: Jost Munster and Moyra Derby

+ 357 99086427 http://www.csymeou.portfoliobox.net/paintings symeouchristina442@gmail.com

Lives and works in the UK and Cyprus Christina Symeou (b. 1993) completed her BA in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, UK in 2016 and participated in the 2016 Degree show at Herbert Read Gallery. Previously she had completed Foundation Studies in Art and Design at the same university. Her work has been featured in the exhibition “Summer Breeze” at Diatopos Contemporary Art Centre (2017) and in “Obscured Transparency” at Crate Project Space and Studio, Margate (2015). She has been accepted at Kingston University for an MA in Curating Contemporary Design, commencing in September 2017. An abstract representation of selected visual information, some form a collage or consist of different fragmented information constructing a structural environment through a series of images. Some images by Christina Symeou are presented in a series, and some singularly, yet each work supports and complements the other, creating a discussion. The elements within these images are often overlayered with edges that are hidden or exposed through transparencies, and are recorded

through various processes. Each material has a different result yet the initial idea derives from the same pattern of thinking: certain characteristics are common and easily distinguishable between the works. Her latest works are digital although some have remained traditionally on canvas and paper.

University of Brighton and University of Toronto Supervisor: Teresa Stoppani Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

GEORGE THEMISTOCLEOUS

+ 357 99438579 www.machiningvision.org george-them@hotmail.com

George Themistokleous (b.1981) is an architect and lecturer in architectural design, history and theory at the Leeds School of Architecture. Due to the interdisciplinary scope of his work, it has been presented in various platforms. Recent work includes: ‘Diplorasis: The Other Side of Vision’, exhibited and published in Acadia 2016: Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers and Cognitive Machines; the drawing ‘An-amnesis of an oneiric city’ published in Lost Diagrams of Walter Benjamin (ed. Sharon Kivland, Helen Clarke); the gif file exhibited at the Micro-cinema of Attractions exhibition (Artos Foundation). Forthcoming papers: ‘Mediating the Interval’ and ‘Digitally Stitching Stereoscopic Vision’ will be published in the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (Büchner-Verlag) and Visual Methodologies in Architectural Research (ed. I. Troiani, S.Ewing, Intellect). He is co-editor of the book This Thing Called Theory (Routledge). George Themistocleous’ wider art and research practice reconsiders the changing role of bodily vision in space and time in relation to digital media and visual technologies. As media and technologies become increasingly integrated within the corporeal body, they induce a rethinking of the cognitive and perceptual limits of the body. Digital technologies allow for older visual devices – in this case, the stereoscope, photography and film – to be thought anew.

XVIII

His research is developed through two combined methodologies: an experimental design practice that involves the making and testing of custom-made optical devices and multimedia installations, and an interdisciplinary theoretical investigation that considers the role of the body in key instances from art, art history, performance art, architecture, philosophy, cognitive science, digital media and film studies. Theory and practice mutually interact and interrogate each other to generate, address and answer questions, only to raise new questions. The experimental practice informs the theory and vice

versa in a continuous loop where visual perception and the thinking of visual perception diverge in an often-conflicting dialogue. This generates a constant critique of each other; the production of the work lies at this intersection. The project entitled Diplorasis is a custom-made optical device of George Themistocleous own making. It incorporates established devices techniques (stereoscope and montage) and re-configures these through digital programming (image processing, wireless reception, motion control), in order to experiment with contemporary understandings of the body and its visual projections. This is important today because vision, and hence the body, is increasingly embedded with-in media environments. The self is multiplied in virtual domains that in turn affect the actual space of the corporeal body. In this respect, it is crucial for him to think how time-based media represent our spatial environments and how this virtuality shifts the locus of the body.

Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual And Applied Arts

KYRIACOS THEOCHAROUS

+ 357 99793093 kyriakos_theoharous@hotmail.com

Kyriakos Theocharous (b. 1988) graduated with an honors MA from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015. He is a postgraduate student of History and Theory of Art at the Cyprus University of Technology. He has participated in many printmaking workshops and is member of the Management Board of the Cyprus Printmakers Association. His first solo exhibition was in Thessaloniki in 2015 and since then has participated in group exhibitions in Cyprus, Greece and abroad. One such is the Art Exchange Exhibition at Kobe (Japan), where he received the second printmaking prize. This year he was awarded the first prize of the Art Printmaking Competition organized by Telemachos Kanthos Foundation. The enlargement of the point to the value of the center, with the circle as the epicenter, gives a cosmogenic significance that corresponds to every idea in the form of creation, whether it is physical, scientific or visual. In this form, subjects correspond like the universe, the human

cell, the intangibility of the soul and the meaning of life and death. The form of the circle was not a choice but aroused through work and corresponds with Kyriakos Theocharous’ design needs.

MARIA TOUMAZOU Goldsmiths College and Glasgow School of Art Supervisors: Bernard Walsh Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

+ 357 99766004 www.neoterismoi.com/exhibitions/maria-toumazou mariatoum@hotmail.com

Maria Toumazou (b. 1989) is an artist and curator. She completed a BA in Art Practice at Goldsmiths College in 2011, under the supervision of Bernard Walsh. In 2014 she gained an MFA from Glasgow School of Art. She is co-founder of the publishing imprint MARIA†. Editions based in Nicosia and New York, and a founding director of Neoterismoi Toumazou (Neo Toum), an artist-led space showcasing emerging local and international artists in Nicosia. Maria Toumazou investigates migration patterns of modernist design items from luxury to utility and consumption. Mirroring social interpretations and the process of displacement from an imaginary public to an absolute private sphere, the work penetrates into concepts and definitions which have, at one point or other, acted as influential values, whilst at other times, been sacrificed for the sake of programs or style.

The different processes inhabited by the artist – the artist as designer, creator and documenter – at times, designate a role in constant flux between process and critique, underlying the ability of art to negotiate potentialities.

Athens School of Fine Arts & Glasgow School of Art Supervisors: Marios Spiliopoulos and Susan Brind Lives and works in Glasgow, UK

LEONTIOS TOUMPOURIS

+ 357 99090773 & +44 7999418069 www.leontiostoumpouris.com tleontios@hotmail.com

Leontios Toumpouris (b. 1982) is a visual artist currently based in Glasgow, UK. In 2016 he graduated from Glasgow School of Art’s MLitt Sculpture with Susan Brind as his supervisor, and in 2009 he graduated from Athens School of Fine Arts’ Painting Department with Marios Spiliopoulos as his supervisor. He has participated in group shows, residencies and workshops in Cyprus and abroad. He is co-founder and former director of Ground artist-run space, an independent space in Nicosia, Cyprus. Leontios Toumpouris moves between disciplines to investigate the appropriation of qualities, properties, methodologies and gestures, and to invent ways to physically manifest transitions. In his recent practice, he conducted a shift from painting to its sculptural embodiment, while negotiating ideas of representation and abstraction. The qualities and properties of painting – the planar view, layering and the limitation of

the surface – are explored in site-responsive installations, attuned with the embodied experience of performing painting. The reconfiguration and reappearance of gestures, performed by the maker or suggested by the materials themselves, is an attempt to balance constructed repetition with occurring proximity. Non-linearity is employed to indicate an open-ended approach to causality within bodies of work.

XIX

University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, Fine Art (2009). Master of Fine Arts Candidate, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2018) Supervisors: Halsey Rodman and Taylor Davis

MARINA XENOFONTOS

+ 357 99813656 www.neoterismoi.com www.marinaxenofontos.com marinxeno@gmail.com

Lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus Marina Xenofontos (b.1988) is based in Limassol, Cyprus. Xenofontos’ work considers inescapability, failure and the marginalisation of personal narratives within civic spaces. Her curatorial practice includes projects such as A bonded Konteiner, an artist-run space in Limassol (2010-2013). In 2013, she co-founded Neoterismoi Toumazou (Neo Toum), a collective and a project space based in Nicosia where she had her first solo exhibition “Karat Castle”. In 2016, she published the fictional archive, “We are not alone - We are a fly in the milk of infinity”. In the same year, her work was part of group exhibitions “Bradley xx”, Glasgow International and AyeBaDome:Super, Thkio Ppalies. In 2017, she participated in “Future of colour” curated by Jan Verwoert for the Cyprus Pavilion, as part of the 57th Venice Biennale of Art; in “Planetes” curated by Elena Parpa and “So close yet so far away” curated by Yiannis Toumazis at Petach Tikva Museum of Art. Marina Xenofontos’ work explores interrelated facets between simulations, objects and language as a constellation of the remembrance of dysfunctional symbols and as a means to shape interpretation and meaning. She uses traditional methods and repetition to embrace an

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Visual & Applied Arts Supervisors: George Tsakiris and Kyriakos Mortarakos Lives and works in Nicosia, Cyprus

TOULA ZAVOU

ephemeral individual position towards representations of collective memory. Xenofontos is interested in processes related to architectural forms and their relation to a specific social context in order to represent moments that unravel the problematic reality of the everyday.

+ 357 99887652 toula.z@hotmail.com

Toulla Zavou (b. 1987) studied at the School of Visual & Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has participated in many group exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad. Her works are characterized by the organization and binding of thread: objects that are revived by giving them shape. Her works look like devastated childhood memories creating a discovery game of objects that have long lost their actual use. Other than painting, she loves to teach and share knowledge. The last years, she has been working at educational centres and at her own workshop using a variety of methods and techniques to cover the art spectrum. Going back to her childhood experiences and memories, Toulla Zavou discovered a fascination in observing people weaving. The repetitive motion, the alteration of the thread in the hand, the immobility of the body, and the focus calmed her. At a young age she started weaving, and studied the traditional cultural heritage. She wanted to express this and use it in her work. It was then that she slowly started noticing objects she could relate to from childhood memories. Objects that she could take apart and simultaneously heal herself with by using the

London School of Journalism and Nottingham Trent University Supervisors: Andrew Brown and Duncan Higgins Lives and works in Halle, Germany

EFY ZENIOU

thread, and transforming that moment in time, as well as the space in a kind of ritual. Toulla Zavou’s work organises geometric compositions along with objects, which come back to life since the binding of the thread reshapes them. They look like destroyed childhood memories and imply the viewer in a game of discovering objects that have long lost their useful value. Within this space the works function autonomously as well as create a geometric composition.

+ 49 1725726282 www.cominghomefunktion.com www.cargocollective.com/efyzeniou www.leavinghomefunktion.com ogumbrella@gmail.com

Efy Zeniou (b.1987) completed her studies in Poetry Writing at London School of Journalism (2011) and holds a BA in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University (2009), with Andrew Brown and Duncan Higgins as her main supervisors. She completed an art foundation course whilst studying for a BTEC with Theodora Papachrysostomou. She is currently a member of the leavinghomefunktion//cominghomefunktion collective and is based in Halle, Germany. leavinghomefunktion//cominghomefunktion includes: Kaupo Homberg (EST), Johannes Fötsch (DE), Elisabeth Oertel (DE), Anne Knödler (DE) and Efy Zeniou (CY).

In 2014 leavinghomefunktion collective initiated a transcontinental project, starting from Germany, and aiming to reach NYC. For over 2 years they exported their daily artistic process to mobile studios. This meant leaving behind the privacy found behind closed doors of their European home territory in exchange for exploring the world through Russian sidecar vehicles. Placing themselves in a state of public they came into close contact with everyday life and learned new ways of seeing and acting. Their choice of vehicle was intentional: a very basic and slow machine, well known by local culture and reputable for its long list of breakdowns. For the artists this tool acted as the perfect key to communication, which took down the borders of both national and disciplinary categories. Without a clue in mechanics, and far from

home, they managed to maintain their bikes for over 40.000 kilometers while opening up a space for problem-solving and storytelling. The peak of their journey took place where Siberia ends: they engineered an Amphibious organism out of their failure prone motorcycles. For 1600 km, and the extension of 1 month, they drove on the Kolyma river which leads to the Arctic Ocean. Through an overlapping repertoire of failings, the group managed to create a supportive network of unexpected characters from the extreme remoteness of the East to the heavy overpopulation of the West. During their long adventure the concept of “failing” – unlike “failure” – established itself as a major tool. In 2017, after an infinite series of mishaps and breakdowns, their Sisyphean efforts came to a halt: they managed to push the boulder to its final NYC stop.

IDENTIFYING AND DOCUMENTING PRACTICES OF NEW CYPRIOT ARTISTS The project MO.17 Young artists from Cyprus has been designed right from the outset as an open process that attempts to activate artistic and critical potentiality, to empower smaller groups and to allow voices which are just emerging to be heard. The work of the younger generation of Cypriot artists constitutes a privileged field of research, as it largely remains unknown and unexplored, theoretically and curatorially, not only for young artists who have just begun their quest, but also for preceding generations. The project focuses on an in-theprocess artistic reality, seeking to explore the dynamics and vitality of the younger generation of Cypriot artists, active both in Cyprus and outside. In a fluid landscape of intense sociopolitical transformations, this research attends to new perspectives, experiences, languages and possibilities, and to processes that shape the artistic present. It wonders about the trends and practices, experiments and pursuits, experimentations and orientations of young artists.Without predisposing conclusions or imposing a priori readings or predefined and closed formations, the project MO.17 asks about the unique features of contemporary artistic activity in Cyprus. Namely, how experiences of displacement, nomadic mobility, and practices of convergence between the local and global shape an artistic reality, both local and, at once, beyond the local. How do young artists position themselves in relation to issues around history, politics, and collective memory? Which concerns are central to a search and redefinition of an artistic identity? What do new artistic practices of exchange and selforganizing approaches in times of recession look like? The main focal point of MO.17 is to conduct field research. It is structured in sections and/or stages that are, on the one hand, distinct, and on the other, permeate each other, working as a mental map that determines different stages of the research process, the subject, the objectives, the methodology, the limitations and the possibilities in a dialectical and interchanging formation. Adopting a research orientation, MO.17 aims to surpass the shortlived character that respective curatorial undertakings which focus on momentum, usually have. It also seeks to create a foundation for research, which will constantly evolve and move beyond its moment of implementation, opening into the future. Tina Pandi Art Historian, Curator, Collections Department National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST)

Tina Pandi was born in Athens. In 2003, she received a Bachelor’s degree in History and Archaeology (with a major in archaeology and art history) from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. In 2004, she received a graduate diploma DEA Histoire de l’art, culture et société from the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, at which she is currently a PhD candidate in Art History. Between 20052006 she was researcher-art historian within the framework of the programme, “Information Society”, documenting the collections and archives of artists at the National Museum of Contemporary Art. Since 2006 she is assistant curator in the Collections sector of the department of Painting and three-dimensional works at the National Museum of Contemporary Art. She has curated retrospective exhibitions of historical artists, such as, Dimitris Alithinos, Retrospective (2012) (co-curated with Stamatis Schizakis), Chronis Botsoglou, Retrospective (2010), Ulrich Rückriem, Shadows of the stone (2008), Bia Davou, Retrospective (2008) (co-curated with Stamatis Schizakis), Nikos Kessanlis, From Matière to the Image (2007-2008), and, monographic exhibitions of contemporary artists, such as, Nina Papaconstantinou, Instead of writing (2011). She has co-curated works by the younger generation of Greek artists, such as, At present time, Young Greek Artists in (2007), Afresh, A New Generation of Greek Artists (2013). She recently co-curated with Stamatis Schizakis, the exhibition, Plexus. Petros Moris, Bia Davou, Efi Spyrou, at the House of Cyprus. She has also edited and published texts in numerous catalogues of group and solo exhibitions.

XXI

ECSTATIC TEXTURES

DISPLACEMENT AS A STATE OF MIND

EVAGORAS VANEZIS

CHARIS KANELLOPOULOU

Meeting the artists participating in Modus Operandi 2017 allowed us to better comprehend the context in which they create: that is, the world in which their practices develop and within which they operate.

Coming to Cyprus for the Modus Operandi 2017 program, I had the opportunity to meet a dynamic group of Cypriot artists of the new generation. Our discussions highlighted not only diverse aspects of their artistic expression but also critical thoughts on the current, rapidly changing social, political and cultural conditions which shape the framework into which they are emerging.

For a younger generation of artists, which has had to respond to its own challenges, callings and experiences, creating work is also a significant issue of affecting the many differential chains of positioning in which they find themselves negotiating ‘that-which-regions’ with the ‘prereflective felt textures of praxis’ [1]. This negotiation colours encounters that do not adhere to giving sense to demarcation lines; instead, it makes thresholds pulse and pushes experience with great speed – a speed accelerating at a rhythm that surprises even the desire that gives it drive – into liminal spaces that host unvoiced (or perhaps unheard) proximities and intimate distances. Via elaborate tactics and practices that allow the expression of these (paradoxical) situations, the group of artists presented in this exhibition challenge assumptions that touch upon the sensory aspect of the experiential and its capacity as an attribute that lends sense to cultural processes, often times investigating the ways in which the two coincide or differ. They inscribe the spaces and times of the works, and the exhibition space, esoteric measurements that articulate the spacing of political and other bodies, the circulation of mnemonics of the self and their probing of historical time. Through the use of language as material, the inventive use of repetition and appropriation, and the conjuring up of worlds, real and imagined, they forge new connections and cultivate a capacity of speaking-with-others that rests upon touches that fashion and perceive the qualities of ecstatic texturing.

Moving into the core of the artists’ work, the notion of displacement appeared almost immediately as a common thread on the perception of a contemporary reality in constant flux, which influences their artistic practices (for example, in relation with their ‘nomadic’ movement in the quest for educational or professional openings in their country and abroad) and defines characteristics of their artistic language and its social engagement. In a world of intense mobility of people, goods, capitals, information and images, displacement evolved to become a way of living, which strengthens, in many ways, the feeling of loss of the physical experience of space and meaningmaking time, and challenges notions of locality, memory and identity. Artists participating in Displacement as a state of mind employ displacement as a matter in their artworks in order to reflect on the current consciousness of this social phenomenon, in general. At the same time, however, they manage to apply the idea of displacement into their language as a mode for (re-) constructing actual ‘unattended’ narratives. By mapping memory processes or moments of history, by engaging with the physicality of space and place, by localizing and contextualizing findings of certain loci or by re-appropriating found objects, the artists reverse the adverse effects of displacement and take advantage of it as a process, either for a new access or to return to additional knowledge, strong responses and interpretations on situations concerning space and time, landscape and memory, homeland, history and identity.

[1] Rosenthal, Sandra B., Time, Continuity and Indeterminacy, 2000. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press

Evagoras Vanezis (born 1988, Nicosia) holds a master’s in Research in Art Theory and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. He is an arts writer and curator working mainly within the tenet of post-conceptual art, the problematic of contemporaneity and the relation between art and biopolitics. Often working directly with artists, his practice develops through encounters with the conceptual bearings of each artist’s practice. Along with Evagoria Dapola (curator and writer) he founded Scale Appropriate, a curatorial initiative active in the field of exhibition-making and digital curation, mixing a discourse on the problematic of scale as a selfreferential node of positioning with a discourse on audience development.

His essays have been included in exhibitions, catalogues and art publications. Recent writings include the essays, ‘Business Plan’ (for Peter Eramian), ‘Exhaustion’ (for Phanos Kyriakou), ‘A Land Rover Approached the Village’ (for Neoterismoi Toumazou) and two essays for the exhibition catalogue, Planetes, specifically, ‘The Gaze of the World’ (for Yorgos Petrou) and ‘Navigation within arcane signs’ (for Marina Xenofontos). Curatorial work includes the exhibition ‘Vanity: How to Enjoy Burning Bridges You Haven’t Built’ (Scale Appropriate, February 2017). He has worked with alternative education platforms in the United Kingdom and is affiliated with Visual Artists Association, Cyprus.

Charis Kanellopoulou is an art historian, independent curator and writer. She has curated exhibitions and projects in museums and institutions (such as, the Benaki Museum, Eugenides Foundation, ISET-Contemporary Greek Art Institute in Athens, Greece), as well as in public spaces. She is an adjunct faculty tutor of Art History at the Open University of Cyprus and at the Department of History and Archaeology of the School of Philosophy at the University of Athens, Greece. She publishes regularly and is editor of the collective volume, Kritiki+Techni (Criticism+Art) Vol. 6. Contemporary Art and the Archive: Archival Collections, Artistic Practices, Reflections (Athens: AICA Hellas, 2015). Her interests focus on modern and contemporary art; public art, and its social character; the relationship between artistic creation and the archive. She is a member of AICA Hellas (Greek section of the International Association of Art Critic) and of the Association of Greek Art Historians.

THOUGHTS

UPON

BEYOND EVENT HORIZON: PERFORMATIVE PLATFORM EXHIBITION EMILY GRAY As said by writer and curator Irit Rogoff, there is a recognition “that the subjects and the forms we have inherited neither accommodate the complex realities we are trying to live out, nor the ever more attenuated ways we have of thinking about them.”[1] Contemplating the community of young artists from Cyprus, the myriad of situations, localities and subjects present a constellation of materials and ideas that, as Rogoff says, play out our complex realities: appearing intricately entwined even as they exist seemingly amidst contradictions and impossibilities. Looking toward a dialogical praxis where “art as a material practice be[comes] inseparable from art as discursive practice”[2], the work created by this community can be seen as an elongated conversation and a site of generative activity. Expounded beyond a set framework, the inheritance of place is contextualised within the ever increasing transient and globalised world of artistic production. Embracing a durational, open-ended collaboration – in which authorship is removed from constraints – the gallery is introduced as the site of social production and a place in which material presented remains fluid “deftly avoid[ing] the stillness of an exhibition through an evolving rehearsal of the objects themselves”[3]. Bringing together these two states – a constellation of conversations between the young artists of Cyprus and the practice of exhibition making as a collaborative and experimental process – Beyond Event Horizon seeks to open up the context of place and identity in the formation of an artistic community, and consciously question if the distinct social, political and physical landscape of Cyprus has an innate influence on the participants collective practice.

MEETINGS

COMMUNICATING VESSELS JULIA GEERLINGS

The generous invitation of Phytorio, brought me to Cyprus to meet a young and upcoming new generation of Cypriot artists in a vibrant and exciting art scene in Nicosia. Coming from a different cultural background (The Netherlands) I was intrigued by the tendency of the artists of the Modus Operandi 2017 to use ceramics, clay and earth in their works. The use of these materials is a common interest of contemporary artists globally, but I observed a specific interest in Cypriot pottery heritage and of the Cypriot landscape within the works of the artists. Many of the artists of Modus Operandi 2017 use the landscape and environment of the island as a direct material for their work, very much embedded in the social, economic and political history of Cyprus. Cypriot pottery is a container for fluids, which symbolizes life and the body. The creation of humans from clay and water is a miraculous birth theme that recurs throughout world religions and mythologies. Water is not merely a physical resource, in every cultural context it is densely encoded with social, spiritual, political and environmental meanings which have a powerful effect on patterns of water use and on the relationships between the users and suppliers. Communicating Vessels carries the name of a scientific apparatus that holds liquids at a constant level regardless of the shape of the containers, but the name also refers to an experimental prose narrative by Andre Breton from 1932. The text explores the constant interpenetration of dreams and wakefulness of daily life. Central in the text is the image of the dream moving through the body’s blood vessels between the exterior world of facts and the interior world of emotions.

[1] Irit Rogoff, ‘Smuggling’ - An Embodied Criticality, transform.eipcp.net, 2008 [2] Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), p 18. [3] Sophia Hao, A Cut A Scratch A Score: a comic opera in three parts, Cooper Gallery, http://www.dundee. ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/cutascratchascore/ (accessed 8 November 2015)

Graduating with a Masters in Curatorial Practice from Glasgow School of Art in 2016, Emily Gray combines an independent research-based curatorial practice with over eight years experience of arts programming and management within the visual arts sector. Her interests focus on the curatorial constellation, phenomenological approaches to exhibitionmaking, and examining the contemporary condition in association with sound and film theory. Previously, she was Associate Director of Salem Art Works and Curator of Scottish Sculpture Workshop; currently, she is Curatorial Assistant for Cooper Gallery at Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. Recent projects include the weight of things, Glasgow School of Art Graduate Degree Show, William Hunter to Damien Hirst: The Dead Teach the Living, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, Platform: 2015, Edinburgh Art Festival, and Natural Bennachie, Year of Natural Scotland 2013. In Since July this year she is undertaking British Council UK/ID Indonesia Residency with Platform3, Bandung, and will commence her PhD candidacy in Archives and Contemporaneity in partnership with New Contemporaries at Nottingham Trent University starting October 2017.

Julia Geerlings is a Dutch independent curator and writer based in Amsterdam and Paris. Geerlings studied Art History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She contributes regularly to magazines and publications, and was a guest editor for Metropolis M. Her curatorial work focuses on the presentation of contemporary art in unusual locations, such as churches, canal houses, garages, window shops, and former military forts. Her curatorial practice has been influenced by the notions of ‘context responsive curating’, in which location and context (social, economic and political) are considered. In line with these notions, she organized exhibitions and performances at Oude Kerk Amsterdam, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Thomaskerk, HKU Media, Galerie van Gelder and Le Moinsun, and was curator-in-residence at Rupert in Vilnius and at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. Geerlings is currently tutor at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, advisor for the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and CBK Rotterdam, and is curator-in-residence at Mains d’Œuvres.

TIMELINE

MO.17

October 2016 Meetings with art historian, Tina Pandi, research collaborator of MO.17. Composition of research proposal and presentation, open to the public, at Phytorio. The suggestions and proposals of the participants are documented, and discussion begins about how the programme and its scheduling will proceed. December 2016 Open call to young artists from Cyprus. Design of an online platform for the submission of material coordinated by our colleague, Evagoras Vanezis. Research and processing/preparation of material by Maria Loizidou, Evagoras Vanezis, Natalie Yiaxi. May-July 2017 Invitation to curators, Emily Gray, Glasgow, Julia Geerlings, Paris, Charis Kanellopoulou, Athens, and Evagoras Vanezis, Nicosia. At a first stage, the curators processed the material and then visited Nicosia to meet the artists at Phytorio. For the artists not living in Cyprus, online meetings were arranged. Coordination: Maria Loizidou, Evagoras Vanezis, Natalie Yiaxi. During their stay in Cyprus, the curators visited the exhibition venues selected in Nicosia: Thkio Ppalies, Garage, Korai, Neoterismoi Toumazou, and Phytorio. Through the communication of curators, the artists they met, and the work artists’ submitted by means of the online platform, the curators arrive at the sections and subjects. The distribution of artists and spaces develops, without being strictly defined or to the exclusion of other orientations. In addition, after an invitation by the Association, art historian Christopher Marinos, Athens, visits Phytorio in June and meets and talks with the artists of MO.17. September-October 2017 Theorists visit, discussions and collaborations with other institutions and art spaces on issues that concern MO.17 occur: Maria Petrides, Independent writer & editor, Chrystèle Moulun Casanova, Art Director and Founder of Element.a, Paris (in collaboration with Artseen), Socratis Socratous, visual artist. The online archive of MO.17 is completed and presented. The two publications of MO.17, designed by Nico Stephou, are launched at Phytorio. Since October 2017, Leontios Toumpouris has been the coordinator of the project. Workshop and Exhibition openings. The proposals and artists hosted at each space are:

ECSTATIC TEXTURES Curated by Evagoras Vanezis Hosted at: Garage Participating Artists: Evelyn Anastasiou Maria Andreou Adonis Archontides AnnaMaria Charalambous Victoria Leonidou Anastasia Mina Panayiotis Mina Anthi Pafiou Sophia Papacosta Kyriakos Theocharous Marina Xenofontos DISPLACEMENT AS A STATE OF MIND Curated by Charis Kanellopoulou Hosted at: Korai Project Space Participating Artists: Ioanna Apostolou Stella Christofi Lenia Georgiou Ismini Haholiadou Stelios Kallinikou Dimitra Kallitsi Marios Constantinides Eleni Mouzourou Alexandra Pambouka Yorgos Petrou Eleni Phyla Efy Zeniou COMMUNICATING VESSELS Curated by Julia Geerlings Hosted at: Thkio Ppalies Artist-Led Project Space Participating Artists: Raissa Angeli Michael Charalambous Lilia Chatzigeorgiou Peter Eramian Dimitris Chimonas Evi Pala Michelle Padeli Nayia Savva Korallia Stergides Maria Theodorou and Stefani Stylianou (Dia.gnosis) Maria Toumazou Leontios Toumpouris Performances by Anthi Pafiou, Demetra Kallitsi, Dimitris Chimonas Hosted at Neoterismoi Toumazou. BEYOND EVENT HORIZON Curated by Emily Gray in collaboration with Leontios Toumpouris Hosted at: Phytorio Participating Artists: Adonis Archontides Lara-Sophie Benjamin AnnaMaria Charalambous Michalis Charalambous Ioanna Cheimona Eirini Constantinou Demetra Kallitsi Maria Kofterou Victoria Leonidou Anthi Pafiou Alexandra Pambouka Korallia Stergides George Themistocleous

62 Visual Artists Association Cyprus

A three day workshop facilitated by Emily Gray with the assistance of Leontios Toumpouris, precedes the exhibition.