THE CYPRUS PAVILION

54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Marianna Christofides, Elizabeth Hoak-Doering

TEMPORAL TAXONOMY

Curated by Yiannis Toumazis

(4 June - 27 November 2011)

• Artists: Marianna Christofides and Elizabeth Hoak-Doering •
• Curator: Yiannis Toumazis
• Commissioner: Louli Michaelidou
• Assistant Commissioner: Angela Skordi
• Production Manager: Constantinos Filiotis
• Press and Communication Manager: Marika Ioannou
• Graphic Design: Xenios Symeonides

Opening Reception - Thursday, 2 June, 19:00
Cocktail in the garden of Palazzo Malipiero, next to the Cyprus Pavilion
San Marco 3198, I-30124 Venezia
(S. Samuele-Palazzo Grassi Boat Stop - Line 2)

Press Conference / Film Screening - Friday, 3 June, 19:00
Conservatorio Statale di Musica “Benedetto Marcello” (Sala Concerto)
Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810 - 30124 Venezia

In the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Cyprus is represented by two artists, Marianna Christofides and Elizabeth Hoak-Doering. Taking the Cypriot experience and historical reality as a starting point, both artists approach issues of historicity, identity and memory in a particular way, tracing and mapping data from a wider cultural history.

Marianna Christofides, belonging to the young, dynamic generation of Cypriot artists, redefines an image of the world by methodically collecting and recreating, with clinical precision, fragments of photographic memory and topographical views of history, thus challenging the apparent reality. These cartographic renegotiations of alleged, or not, worlds, examine and process a new space-time grid of existence, in which utopia and reality are incorporated with the same validity. The reconstruction of coordinates and the appropriation of images from disparate and geographically remote areas, re-create a new topography of the fantastic.

American-born Elizabeth Hoak-Doering has been living and working in Cyprus for years. Her proposal consists of a contemporary re-working of kinetic art and a critical approach to history and memory. In her recent kinetic installations, objects are obliquely triggered by the visitors' presence, gradually producing drawings or traces on paper over a period of time. The work raises questions of agency and the scope of human memory, exposing new ways of reckoning of spatio-temporality. Doering critically examines the complex social and political nexus in Cyprus in a manner that is significantly universal in its reach.

The synergy between the ‘emotional' object drawings of Doering and the ‘scientific' topographies of Christofides aims to create a special dynamic inside the exhibition space.

Through a museography of time and space, the exhibition aims on the one hand to explore social, political and cultural relations, as well as trends and tensions on a local and global level, and on the other hand it attempts to operate in the manner of the medieval ‘illuminated manuscripts' that convey new and valuable knowledge.

The work of both artists departs from the Cyprus experience and the field of socio-politics, but it extends and transforms so as to articulate a substantial discourse as part of a much broader, global system. Issues of multiculturalism, crossings, displacement, migration, and hybridization are common ground in their research. Their meeting inside the Cyprus Pavilion seeks to highlight and negotiate existing positions and contradictions surrounding the apparent homogeneity of a globalised environment, while simultaneously it addresses the deeply human need for spiritual and intellectual transgression: one that leads to a redefinition of the spatio-temporal systems of existence, as well as a reformulation of human experience.

The Cyprus pavilion exhibition will be accompanied by a publication in English and Greek, with essays by Yiannis Toumazis, Marcia Brennan and Liz Wells.
The participation of the Republic of Cyprus in the Venice Biennial is organised and sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

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