Born in Nicosia-Cyprus, 1995
Graduated from the Villa Arson-School of Fine Arts, Nice-France, 2022
Lives and works in Berlin-Germany
Growing up in Nicosia, a divided capital, my life was marked by division, borders, physical and mental conditioning. My work inevitably becomes a process of healing where I use abstraction as a political tool, as a way towards openness and queerness. Queerness seen as what is not yet here, as the constant search of a new reality, and a form of political resistance, resilience and potentiality.
My work is directly linked to the landscapes of my past. I was brought up in Nicosia, Cyprus - a divided capital in a household that was itself divided, marked by family separations and violence. The landscape of my childhood was restricted and more often than not limited to the bedroom and my inert unexpressed thoughts. Growing up on an island with influences from European and Middle Eastern traditions, my large scale drawings, created with the restriction of charcoal and canvas could therefore be described as residing in an intermediate space of contradictions, navigating between ideas of abundance and emptiness, ornament and function, calmness and agitation, control and chance, natural and artificial.
Charcoal, allows for swift alterations—erasing, layering, and transforming the composition with ease while canvas, steeped in artistic history, serves as a timeless foundation. By restricting my use of materials, I am inflicting on myself a focused research and, in a time increasingly technological, I am taking a step into materiality. This comes in reaction to our contemporary mental disposition. Amidst the rapid pace of life—dominated by news, conflicts and social unrest—we are often marked by confusion and disorientation. My works are suggesting a re-evaluation, proposing the possibility to stay still, in introspect and rethink the landscape which our body and mind inhabit.
Through my pieces, I am proposing imaginary, queer landscapes. Queer in the sense of the ‘not yet here’ (in the words of José Esteban Muñoz), the yet to be created. My works, situated on the cusp between abstraction and figuration, can be described as compositions that are constantly unresolved and in a state of becoming, proposing an infinite amount of interpretations and a never ending discovery - once you think you have ‘seen’ and ‘know’ what it is, you realise that the image is fleeing, opening up into another idea of what it could be, leading to the realisation that the work is not about ‘what it is’ but rather about ‘what it could become’. It is a paradox, through the stillness of the drawings, the impression of an unlimited movement is created.
Reflecting on the visual landscape of my childhood, and challenging the realities of borders and divisions (both historical and familial) is the main pillar of my practise. In my installation ‘The Wall’, the qualities of a wall (a strong, fixed, separating structure, delimiting spaces of freedom and restriction) are being turned upside down. The wall is transformed from something rigid to a structure that opens up the space and offers the possibility of immersion and rediscovery. The wall becomes translucent, soft, light. It does not separate the space anymore but expands it. In a world increasingly defined by separations - personal, geopolitical, ideological, it proposes the reversal of the given structures, a more human and sensible coexistence with others, with nature and with ones-self. Made out of thin fabric, It allows us to see through it, it is a fragile and non-functioning wall. Or in a sense, a better functioning one, as It proposes the possibility of a changed architectural landscape where structures of division transform into possibilities for togetherness.
photo by Simone Simon, 2023
© 2024 Pavlos Ioannides