Combining a background in archaeology and dance, Christodoulos Panayiotou refocuses and reinterprets official public images by referring to past events or extravagant attractions from an archaeological perspective, while simultaneously emphasizing the spectacle of the images by maximizing theatrical and performance-oriented elements.
Unlike other artists from war-torn regions who tend to translate the horror and cruelty of war into direct source material for their work, Panayiotou, originally from the politically unstable nation and Cyprus, depicts his country’s political/social/cultural context in a gentle and calm manner, using official public records of reports as a medium. Utilizing archived images of Cyprus, the works Never Land, Wonder Land, and I Land depict the shape of the modern history of Cyprus. I Land is composed of 160 black-and-white slides based on photographs archived by Cyprus’s Bureau of Public Information. These pictures document the activities of Cyprus’s first president, Archbishop Makarios III, who held office from 1960 to 1977, and his ministers. Panayiotou is not only interested in the aesthetic value of the time captured in the archived images, but he is also interested in the values acquired through the process of accumulating the records. This leads him to inquire into what kind of perspectives and interpretations could be contained in the archived images which reveal the history and identity of a nation.
