Artist's book: a deconstruction of a 16 mm film shot by Haris Epaminonda in Cyprus, embarking on a new set of associations between image and subject, source and information, meaning and abstraction.
Chapters focuses primarily on the artist's most elaborate film project to date, filmed in various locations
in Cyprus and presented in four venues: Kunsthaus Zürich, Modern Art Oxford, Point Centre
for Contemporary Art, Nicosia (2013), Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2014). In the film,
she questions the nature of classical film-making. Rather than following a linear, predefined narrative
structure, the project unfolded over the months at the various venues in which the exhibition
has been shown.
The book aims to be something like an encyclopedia, being conscious of the impossibility of
such a task at the same time. It includes all the material that Epaminonda had used for the film,
examining cultural rituals, their presentation, preservation and representation. Objects, costumes,
animals, actors and also reference material that was important for the artist (from Fra Angelico to
Parajanov, Dante to
Pasolini, maps and more) are here collected in 26 posters.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Haris Epaminonda.
Chapter IV at Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, 14 March – 18 May 2014.
Haris Epaminonda (born 1980 in Nicosia,
Cyprus, lives
and works in Berlin) uses video and film, collage, photography, books
and objects in an extensive process of assembling and disassembling
appropriated materials to reconstruct non-linear narratives.
The artist works with found images from the past—sometimes faded
travel photographs, or the pages of old nature magazines, ethnographic
artifacts or footage from forgotten television programmes.
Epaminonda then manipulates the images, cutting and layering, to
create new works that feel wholly part of the present.
Haris Epaminonda's work has been presented in
several solo exhibitions in some of the leading institutions for contemporary
art such as the Museum of Modern Art, NY (2011); the
Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2011); Tate Modern, London
(2010); and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2009). She has also been
included in significant group exhibitions, like dOCUMENTA (13),
Kassel in 2012, the 2nd Athens Biennale (2009) and the
5th Berlin Biennale (2008). Haris Epaminonda co-represented Cyprus at the Venice Biennale in 2007.
