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A
rtist Christodoulos Panayiotou was this
year’s winner of the Nemitsas Foundation
Prize in Visual Arts. The President of the
Republic of Cyprus, Mr Nicos Anastasiades,
presented him his award at the Nemitsas
Foundation’s 6
th
annual award ceremony on 8
October 2015.
The Foundation’s Board of Directors reached
the decision unanimously at its meeting on 18
July 2015.
Its reasoning: “The Nemitsas Prize 2015 is
awarded to Christodoulos Panayiotou for
his internationally recognised, wide-ranging
achievements in Visual Arts, and specifically
on the identification and uncovering of
hidden narratives in visual records of time.
His work is subtle and clever, touching on
History, Archaeology and Politics. With his
traces, fragments and manufactured objects,
he is widely recognised for his success in
telling stories and alluding to past events.
His work has been presented in both solo and
group exhibitions in prestigious centres of art
worldwide”.
Award winner, Laureate Christodoulos
Panayiotou
I would like to talk about the syntax of success
and the grammar of distinction. You see, it
is with some unease that I am standing here
before you. That is because through my art I
always seek to discover, and therefore, reveal,
the points that have not been manifested, the
words that have not been spoken (at times
because they cannot be uttered and at other
times because they are not allowed to be
heard). I am trying, after all, to uncover that
which the absolute say of power levels, and
what the dominant rituals repel. However,
since whatever can be distinguished can
also be seen and can therefore be prioritised,
distinction calls into question that valuable
transparency which my own, parenthetical
speech seeks to accomplish. I am using this
sharp prefix “dis”, as heavy as it may lie on
words, separating people and their actions,
prioritising everything in the sliding scale of
good-better-excellent.
Distinction, though, is also, paradoxically
enough, our ability to produce meaning. How
else would it be possible for us to perceive
passion, had we not been able to distinguish
between infatuation and love? Without this
analytical capability, Euripides could never
have conceived the function of love and thus
created the monster known as Medea. That
would leave us all unable to identify with
her, or even simply understand her, while
distinguishing how close far away can be.
Without the distinction between responsibility
Nemitsas Foundation Prize in Visual Arts
