Christodoulos Panayiotou

In his research-based practice, Christodoulos Panayiotou unearths archival materials to examine questions of institutional history, state formation, and collective identity. A participant in both Documenta and the Venice Biennale, Panayiotou often works with Cyprus’s public archives, mining photographs from the 1960s and ’70s to highlight an important transitional period in his country’s history. “What I find most interesting in archival pictures, apart from the aesthetic value that time adds to them, is actually the value they gain via the very process of archiving,” the artist has said. “This attaches a paradoxical dynamic to the images that reveal the past while they project the future.” He continues to build on his background in choreography and anthropology, creating performative spaces in his films, videos, and installations.