Méditerranée

As part of the Third International Sea Festival “Nautilus” the Evagoras and Kathleen Lanitis Foundation, presents the exhibition of Modern Art Méditerranée.

The exhibition Méditerranée presents works by artists from Cyprus and the Mediterranean, who through their work explore the spirit of the“closed sea of cultures”.

Artists: Etel Adnan / Anna Boghiguian / Valentinos Charalambous / Emin Çizenel / Savvas Christodoulides / Marianna Christofides / Bia Davou / Giuseppe Gabellone / Luigi Ghirri / Jannis Kounellis / Nikos Kouroussis / Maria Loizidou / Katerina Neophytidou / Rallou Panagiotou / Jean-Daniel Pollet / Aldo Rossi / Christoforos Savva / Christiana Soulou / Uygur Yilmaz

Curator: Christoforos Marinos

What do we know about the Mediterranean today? Is it still the ‘inexhaustible source of information useful to our history’ Le Corbusier argued it to be? Do the landscapes unfolding across this place of myth continue to fascinate artists, and how may its stock of representations actually inspire them?

Méditerannée is an exhibition featuring nineteen artists from different countries of the Mediterranean whose work probes the mental aspect of that ‘enclosed sea of civilizations’. Belonging to different generations, these artists often adopt an archeologist’s perspective in order to propose narratives that are concerned not with the topography of the Mediterranean alone, but with its symbolic valence, its variegated layers of meaning. In the exact same manner of the great modernist artists that travelled round it and sang its praises, the contemporary artists see in the Mediterranean –in its cities, and islands, and coasts– an inscrutable metaphor, a grand narrative to be interpreted and deconstructed.

The exhibition borrows its title from the famous movie Méditerranée (1963) of Jean-Daniel Pollet, one of the most important avant-garde French films. The repetitive, almost hypnotic images that compose the somber film was a result of Pollet’s three and a half month trip made in fifteen countries of the Mediterranean. In keeping with the style of Pollet’s film, works in the exhibition Méditerannée are treated as if they were words or signs, which seen as a whole offer viewers the possibility to articulate their own private poetry.

Christoforos Marinos is an art historian, art critic and curator based in Athens. He is the founder and co-editor of the online art magazine kaput (www.kaput.gr). He is the editor of Possibilities: Interviews with Young Greek Artists (futura, Athens, 2006); Meatspace: Art in a State of Emergency (www.meatspaceart.org); The Task of Curating (AICA Hellas, Criticism + Art Journal, 2011). Since 2002, Marinos has been contributing regularly to various Greek art journals and exhibition catalogues. As an Athens correspondent, he has collaborated with Flash Art, Modern Painters and artforum.com. Marinos is the president of AICA Hellas.

The Sea Festival, under the auspices of The Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU is organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Opening on September 8, 2012 at 20:00 at the Evagoras Lanitis Centre.

Opening Hours
Daily except Monday: 10:00-13:00 & 17:00-20:00
Saturday and Sunday: 17:00-20:00