Christodoulos Panayiotou: One Thousand and One Days

Christodoulos Panayiotou's multidimensional work addresses issues and concerns ranging from the complex contemporary understanding of what constitutes "the public," to the construction of national identity and history. He frequently takes ceremonies, festivals, and theatrical spectacles as a point of departure from which to explore the structures and customs that inform social experience. His process also engages the archives of the press and regional and state agencies of his country, Cyprus, to reflect on how interpretations of a collective sense of identity are dependent on the manner in which images and information are arranged and presented. For his presentation at CAM St. Louis—the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States—Panayiotou will present new and preexisting works that demonstrate both the range of techniques and the socio-political concerns that define his practice. New works being created for the exhibition include a multi-part series of appropriated photographs from official Cyprus archives and a site-specific mural based on a particular historical set design that develop interrelated themes of celebration, festival, display, hegemony and symbolic domination. The title of the exhibition combines allusions to A Thousand Days, a 1965 book by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. about the Kennedy Administration (seen in one of the images sourced at the Press and Information Office Archives), and the collection of traditional Middle Eastern folk stories 1001 Nights, to underscore Panayiotou's emphasis on building narratives about power and presentation both within and between his works.

Christodoulos Panayiotou: One Thousand and One Days is organizd by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and curated by Chief Curator Dominic Molon.

Christodoulos Panayiotou
One Thousand and One Days
Kurator: Dominic Molon