Touch Me Not

An altogether different visual arts show will take place in two medieval churches at Pelendri, from May 24 to June 8, 2014, organised by the Ministry of Education and Culture in collaboration with the Holy Bishopric of Lemesos and the Pelendri Community Council.

The project “Touch Me Not”, takes place in the framework of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s decentralization policy, aiming at the advancement of cultural innovation in the regional local self-government. The church of the Holy Cross, a world heritage site, preserving a vast range of wallpaintings from the 12th to the 14th and 15th centuries, and the nearby church of Panagia Katholiki, with magnificent 12th to 17th century icons and an exquisite renaissance fresco, will host contemporary art creations that bear perceptions from the Cypriot art during Frankish rule.

The analogies of history to the present are reinterpreted and taken further, at times they are afforded an elliptical representation or they are dropped altogether, as in the case of the “Golden Monochromes” by Christodoulos Panayiotou. In his panels, placed to fill two empty slots at the upper iconostasis of Panagia Katholiki, the divine light covers the entire painterly surface and becomes the subject-matter itself, as the holy images are omitted, in a process of reproducing a “faceless glory”.

Since certain forms and notions are not touched at all, the title “Touch Me Not” which refers to the scene when Christ asks Mary Magdalene not to hold on him, “Μη μουάπτου”, as represented in a fresco in the church of the Holy Cross and an icon in the church of Panagia Katholiki, is thus conceptually appropriate to account for an approach of relieving the past of redundant loads, thus allowing the viewer to mystify an absence and go beyond the visible and the palpable.Hanging on a beam and floating high on the ceiling, the transparent and perforated “Cherubim” (Χερουβείμ) pattern, by Lefteris Tapas, functions as a votive amulet for “Touch Me Not”. Tatiana Ferahian’s “Eilitarion”, getting its name from the Greek word ειλητάριον which means script written on parchment, hanging from an arch in the church of the Holy Cross,becomes a contemporary codex with quotations from the inscribed messages, held by prophets of the Old Testament, as depicted on the walls of this church. Lefteris Olympios has created a painterly tribute to the fascinating series of donors and dedicators delineated in the frescoes of the church of the Holy Cross, rendering their portraits in his own idiosyncratic style, an expressionism that consorts with the abstract hagiographic realism of Byzantium.

Angelos Makrides’ latest work, completed in February 2014, follows one of his intimate practices of discovering functional objects anew. His shovels converted into peasant pilgrims and believers will be shown for the first time in the churches of Panagia Katholiki and Timios Stavros. Glavkos Koumides turns the pew into a schematic, architectural condensation, reinventing this piece of church furniture through a perspective that sets it free from its commonplace use, transforming it into a hieratic, ritualistic entity. Works by other Cypriot visual artists and creations by the late painters Georgios Pol.

Georgiou, Stass Paraskos and Stelios Votsis will also be included in the cultural project “Touch Me Not”, aspiring to offer Cypriots and tourists alike an opportunity to get acquainted with the medieval-byzantine heritage and its significations in the current artistic production of the island.

For information on guided tours to Pelendri, please contact telephone number +357 97 778 799.