CHRISTODOULOS PANAYIOTOU

Wonder Land
2008
slide show, 80 color slides

Wonder Land is the result of extensive research in the historical archives of the city of Limassol, focusing on the mania of Limassolians to disguise into Disney’s characters during the carnival parade (renegotiating the political and historical narrative of this important social event). The research covers the period from the end of 1970s to the present.

“My artistic practice emphasizes and deals with social concepts and practices. Extending my personal convictions to the unexpected elements of research and to the cultural features of a troubled milieu I persistently strive to unsettle trivial orthodoxies that constitute the ideology of our everyday life. My rather idiosyncratic educational background (I was first trained as a dancer, then I took courses in philosophy and anthropology) has been a substantial basis in order to engage my vision and consequently the vision of the spectator with a process during which one is not only responsible for the way one perceives the work itself, but also for the way in which his or her critique signifies his or her position in relation to the production of culture (its gestures, iconography, sounds etc).
Driven by the desire to focus on the prospect within which my work is to obtain a relevant credibility, I try to identify with the process that constitutes not the economy of a perspective, but rather the revelation of a more poetic and at the same time plausible point of view. I have been consistently interested in references that promote the art of ambivalence to the point that this can be criticised or re-evaluated and I see my art as a contribution to re-emphasise the duties of the spectator. Searching for the fragmented moment of our everyday practice, I try to re-construct the lost moment of silence, of pause, of memory and hence of an inconsequential time that legitimizes what we ignore, or rather pretend to ignore of ourselves and of our culture.” (C. P.)

Christodoulos Panayiotou’s (1978, Limassol, CY) works are performance-based and collectively span all levels of what one could describe as a spectrum of the performative in art – from creating a space for an activity such as dancing, directing actors and events, to the recording and tracing of both the artist’s and society’s “performances”. Based on a range of media, often incorporating video and sound within installations, Panayiotou’s aesthetic interventions often reference political stimuli, at the same time offering possibilities for multiple other readings.
In 2005 Panayiotou won the 4th DESTE Prize. He has recently exhibited in The Museum Of Modern Art Oxford; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Platform Garanti, Istnabul; Den Frie, Copehnagen; Taipen Biennale, Taiwan; Busan Biennale, Korea. He is currently artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. He is based in Berlin (GE).