4 March – 10 April 2021
I DON’T SLEEP, I DREAM
Marina Xenofontos
We are delighted to announce that, after a long hiatus due to the pandemic, we are reopening our doors with Marina Xenofontos’ solo exhibition I don’t sleep, I dream. The exhibition will take place in our new space at #18 Agora Anexartisias, which we are thrilled to finally welcome you to.
“Life is running normal, smoothly, like a thousand hearts falling on me with a thousand bright lightnings on them. It’s a big storm of waves; most of them enticing to ride on. Pleasing for the eyes, but not always—that is where I am standing from. Is this another charming story of an idea eager to be acknowledged? A story wouldn’t be that bad actually. It always smells like, when you know what you’re talking about, and it almost feels like two people are making bread, somewhere near. You can barely see them, talking about the weather on their breaks, or about how strange it is to recognise what you like when you see it.” 1 You know, sometimes I wonder how things would be if we could be together. The Self as a solitary being–Descartes. The Self as a solitary thinking being—solipsism. Solipsism and the problem of other minds.
Last night at dinner I met my cousin’s wife, she has a flower tattooed on her hand and the initials of another man. As grandpa was sitting, a Russian woman came to ask for two euros so that she could buy a candle. I guess she is his caretaker. I wish there was a machine that kissed relatives. I would have liked to design it and name it “kissing machine for relatives.”
Wild plants on the roof of an adobe house, sunsets hitting hard on cheap aluminium windows making them golden, making them current. White, pink, blue, yellow, black…
this is how I think of things nowadays. This wasn’t a Cyprus dream, it was rather a monkey and a tiger hugging in my dream, it was more about the solution, it was more about “we wanted the solution too.”
Anecdotal stories and epitomical coincidences associated with individuals can suggest alternative understandings of collective events through minor histories; still part of the broader landscape of ruling contemporary ideas and behaviours, they provide an insight into the real as it manifests itself in the everyday. The real sometimes turns out to be a tiger and a monkey hugging in my dream, or an experience in an L.A.-decorated brothel house in the tourist area of the island’s Mediterranean coastline. You are there in the first place because your DJ friend suggested you make a DJ box for a party, and then the owner of the brothel house takes the microphone and performs a speech on how sex has to be part of everyone’s life no matter who or how old you are, and locality and universalism somehow converge.
Love is when we speak other languages
– What do we need for the gold leaf application?
– We need gold, 23.75 carats on leafs.
“Love is, when we speak other languages
To the fathers of young children,
to Edward,
to anything that kept us on,
to the streets.” 2
Love is, when we speak other languages
when we don’t have anyone to be aware of.
– Selected notes from the artist’s diary
1 Extract from Kανονική Ζωή – Ηλίθια Σώματα, a self-published book of texts. Author and date unknown.
2 Neoterismoi Toumazou, “Salamaki street”. In: Jan Verwoert and Polys Peslikas, (eds.), Umm Kulthum faints on stage, Sternberg Press, 2020.
Marina Xenofontos (b. 1988, Limassol, Cyprus) is based between Limassol and Amsterdam. She graduated from Bard College, New York with an MFA in Sculpture (2018), and recently completed a residency at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2019). Her first solo exhibition, Karat Castle, took place at Neoterismoi Toumazou, Nicosia (2015). Her second solo exhibition, But we’ve met before, was recently held at Hot Wheels Athens (2020/2021).
Selected group shows include: Utters excess in between, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi and Danae Io, State of Concept, Athens (2020); A Big Heritage with A Glorious Past, curated by mama, Critical Distance, Toronto (2020); Hypersurfacing, curated by Marina Christodoulidou, NiMAC, Nicosia (2020). Together with Neoterismoi Toumazou, Xenofontos was guest of honour at The Future of Colour (2017), an exhibition by Polis Peslikas at the Cyprus Pavilion of the Biennale Arte Venice, curated by Jan Verwoert.