PREVIEW: Theodoulos Polyviou-Double Feature
Theodoulos Polyviou is an artist based in Berlin. His practice whose practice engages with expanded and immersive media to consider the place of bodies, in particular queer bodies, within institutional spaces, cultural and political narratives and the digital realm. He is the co-founder and former director of experimental project space Koraï, Cyprus.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Julia Stoschek Foundation Archive
Spanning video, sculpture, archival objects, photography, and prints, “Double Feature: Theodoulos Polyviou” introduces t h e third chapter of the artist’s series “Transmundane Economies” (2022 – ongoing) to Germany. In this series, Polyviou deploys digital technolo- gies like virtual reality and CGI filmmaking to study, reconstruct, and fill in historical gaps of Cypriot cultural heritage. His speculative approach circumvents nationalist agendas by offer- ing alternative ways to revisit the historical complexities of the island and to imagine its future. The central site-responsive video installation “A Palace in Exile” (2024) was produced in collaboration with architectural designer Loukis Menelaou as the culmination of Polyviou’ long-term research. The video consists entirely of computer-generated images, which jump between two places and time periods: the Julia Stoschek Foundation in the present and Cyprus in the 1950s, a decade characterized by ethnic and nationalist tensions in the pro- cess of gaining independence from British colonial rule. The video’s narrative concentrates on the first architectural competition in the region launched in the ’50s for the construction of a new Archbishop’s Palace for the Church of Cyprus. This was hotly debated in the press, showing the role architecture played in shaping the island’s national identity. These debates are communicated via a voice-over edited from newspaper articles from the 1950s and ’60s, which the artist sourced from the digital archive of the Press and Information Office in Nicosia (capital of Cyprus). In the end, the new palace was built in a Neo-Byzantine style, after three shortlisted proposals were deemed too mod- ern by the Church and other conservative forces. In the video, Polyviou and Menelaou present their virtual entry into the competition, placing real and speculative histories in dialogue. Their design draws upon the teachings and draw-ings of Daskalos, a Cypriot mystic and healer active from the 1950s to the 1990s, whose esoteric practice presents a counter to the hegemonic identity put forward by the Church and the state. In 1952, Daskalos was summoned to the old Archbishop’s Palace to publicly renounce all ties to occultism and spiritualism, although he then continued to practice and expanded his following. In addition to the video piece, the presentations feature a wall-mount- ed print of Polyviou and Menelaou’s design for the palace. The surrounding sculptures and archival materials—some of which also appear in the video— have been selected for each exhibition location to produce two distinct encounters with one body of work. In Berlin, a sconce made from a pair of scaffolding pipes and an ecclesiastical candle adorns the entry wall. A shelving system with concrete molds sourced from a now defunct stone and ceramics factory, once fundamental to Cyprus’s construction industry, then acts as a barrier dividing the space. The molds, which come from the artist’s personal archive, were previously utilized in the casting of concrete columns for the Archbishop’s Palace, along with various churches. In Düsseldorf, the video installation is accompanied by a larger-than-life circular votive made from the same scaffolding pipes, here crowned by seven candles. Polyviou’s use of materials links the exhibition space to the original construction site of the palace, as well as to religious ceremonies and architectures. While the sconce and votive invoke sacredness, the molds evoke an empty monumentality; both reference the form of columns, associated with sublime or worldly power.
Photo: Theodoulos Polyviou, A Palace in Exile (Part 3 of Transmundane Economies, 2022 – ongoing), 2024, video, 16′30″, color, sound. Video still, © Theodoulos Polyviou, Courtesy the artist and Julia Stoschek Foundation
Info: Curators: Line Ajan & Lisa Long, Julia Stoschek Foundation, JSF Düsseldorf, Schanzenstrasse 54, Düsseldorf, Germany, Duration: 1/9/2024-2/2/2025 & Julia Stoschek Foundation, JSF Berlin, Leipziger Straße 60 (entrance: Jerusalemer Straße), Berlin, Germany, Duration: 12/9/2024-25/4/2025, https://jsfoundation.art
