Theodoulos Polyviou

Dark Factory at MMCA Changdong, Seoul (KR)

05.06.2025 - 12.06.2025

Minha Park, Serin Oh, Eunhee Lee, Eobchae, Theoodulos Polyviou

Presented within Dark Factory, a group exhibition.
Curated by Giulia Colletti & Andrew Cummings.

Supported by MMCA Changdong Residency.

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Artist’s Note:
[...] The work brings together two sites of storage: unused vitrines and exhibition ephemera from the MMCA collection, and environmental data recorded inside the Museum of Shamanism in Seoul. Sensors placed in the Shamanic collection’s storage record fluctuations in temperature, humidity, air pressure, and airflow. The data is understood not as scientific evidence, but as a way of listening to the collection, with a focus on its shamanic paintings. These environmental traces, evocative of “shinbaram”, the divine breeze of presence in Korean shamanic practice, are used to animate the lighting of dormant museum cabinets. The installation reflects on the fluctuating status of the paintings, as they move between sacred function and museological containment, to consider how spiritual agency may remain active across different contexts of display, where gods may consent to or withdraw from visibility, and where they might, in turn, act as curators themselves. [...]

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Double Feature: A Palace in Exile at Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf (DE)

2.09.2024 - 27.04.2025

Curated by Line Ajan and Lisa Long.
Architectural design in collaboration with Loukis Menelaou.

[...] In this series, Polyviou deploys digital technologies like virtual reality and CGI filmmaking to study, reconstruct, and fill in historical gaps of Cypriot cultural heritage. His speculative approach circumvents nationalist agendas by offering alternative ways to revisit the historical complexities of the island and to imagine its future. The central site-responsive video installation consists entirely of computer- generated images, which jump between two places and time periods: the Julia Stoschek Foundation in the present and Cyprus in the 1950s, a decade characterized by ethnic and nationalist tensions in the process of gaining independence from British colonial rule. The video’s narrative concentrates on the first architectural competition in the region launched in the 1950s for the construction of a new Archbishop’s Palace for the Church of Cyprus. This was hotly debated in the press, showing the role architecture played in shaping the island’s national identity. [...]

Double Feature: A Palace In Exile at Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (DE)

2.09.2024 - 27.04.2025

Curated by Line Ajan and Lisa Long.
Architectural design in collaboration with Loukis Menelaou.

[...] In this series, Polyviou deploys digital technologies like virtual reality and CGI filmmaking to study, reconstruct, and fill in historical gaps of Cypriot cultural heritage. His speculative approach circumvents nationalist agendas by offering alternative ways to revisit the historical complexities of the island and to imagine its future. The central site-responsive video installation consists entirely of computer- generated images, which jump between two places and time periods: the Julia Stoschek Foundation in the present and Cyprus in the 1950s, a decade characterized by ethnic and nationalist tensions in the process of gaining independence from British colonial rule. The video’s narrative concentrates on the first architectural competition in the region launched in the 1950s for the construction of a new Archbishop’s Palace for the Church of Cyprus. This was hotly debated in the press, showing the role architecture played in shaping the island’s national identity. [...]

Transmundane Economies: A Palace In Exile at Fondazione Elpis, Milan (IT)

10.04.2024 - 07.06.2024

Architectural design in collaboration with Loukis Menelaou.

Supoported by
Deputy Minister of Culture of the Republic of Cyprus

[...] In this series, Polyviou deploys digital technologies like virtual reality and CGI filmmaking to study, reconstruct, and fill in historical gaps of Cypriot cultural heritage. His speculative approach circumvents nationalist agendas by offering alternative ways to revisit the historical complexities of the island and to imagine its future. The central site-responsive video installation consists entirely of computer- generated images, which jump between two places and time periods: the Fondazione Elpis in the present and Cyprus in the 1950s, a decade characterized by ethnic and nationalist tensions in the process of gaining independence from British colonial rule. The video’s narrative concentrates on the first architectural competition in the region launched in the 1950s for the construction of a new Archbishop’s Palace for the Church of Cyprus. This was hotly debated in the press, showing the role architecture played in shaping the island’s national identity. [...]

NEXUS at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (DE)

11.09.2024 -26.10.2024

Davide Allieri, Allen-Golder Carpenter, Taína Cruz, Theodoulos Polyviou

Curated by Sigrid Hermann

[...] Theodoulos Polyviou’s sculptures on view in the gallery constitute formal responses resulting from his speculative research project ‘Transmundane Economies (2022 - ongoing).’ The site-responsive video installation ‘A Palace in Exile (2024),’ a central piece from this series, is simultaneously premiering at Julia Stoschek Foundation in Berlin. While in the latter, CGI and digital technologies are his main tool, his sculptures repurpose construction and architectural elements directly associated with the actual Neo-Byzantine Archbishop’s Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus and its history. With his works, Polyviou opens a dialogue between contemporary political concerns of nationalism. Situated within the broader context of Polyviou's exploration of the Church’s influence on Cyprus’s post-colonial identity, this work delves into the architectural and ideological structures that both unify and marginalize. The negative space of both sculptures on view at the gallery, expose the concealed sanctity of architecture, questioning how built forms can contain histories both visible and erased.
[...]

SCREEN at Bode Museum, Berlin (DE)

30.11.2023 -03.03.2024

Curated by Cäcilia Fluck and Daniel Milnes.
Architectural design in collaboration with
Loukis Menelaou.

A special exhibition by the Skulpturensammlungund Museumfür Byzantinische Kunst, StaatlicheMuseen zu Berlin. Museumfür ByzantinischeKunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

[...] The starting point of the exhibition at the Bode-Museum is an 18th-century iconostasis from the collection. As a dividing element ina Christian Orthodox church in Cyprus, the iconostasis once framed a series of depictions of saints and was positioned to conceal the sanctuary from the congregation in the nave. In this new work, Polyviou traces the extraordinary journey the iconostasis has made from the Mediterranean island to its present location within the Bode-Museum (currently featured in the exhibition Klartext, in room072/073). SCREEN explores how history can betold in new ways, using immersive digital media to create alternative and more poetic means of experiencing the stories connected with the object. [...]

Rosa Mystica at Chiesa di San Remigio, Toscana (IT)

24.06.2023 – 24.02.2023

Curated by Gabriele Tosi.
Architectural design in collaboration with
Loukis Menelaou.

Promoted by Fondazione Elpis in collaborationwith Galleria Continua

[...] The statue of an Announcing Angel,companion to the famous dei Bianchi, disappeared from Fosdinovo in 1628. A few years later, in 1676, a new effigy dedicated to the Virgin appeared: Our Lady of the Rosary, from the Church of San Remigio. According to oral tradition, there is an unusual theory according to which the new Immacolata is indeed the angel, not lost but changed. Many clues supportthis evocative hypothesis. The video installation Rosa Mystica follows this version and stages an eternal mutation between the sculptural bodies. Placed on an altar in the same church where theoriginal statue is conserved, the work explores the potential of immersive technologies to interact with the sacred and with rituality. The age-old relationship between the people of Fosdinovo and the transcendent dimension is also expressed by performative practices such as the enrobing of statues and processions, and in Rosa Mystica it attains a virtual extension with the intention of speaking to tomorrow’s community. [...]

Transmundane Economies: Bellapais Abbey at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (DE)

14.01.2022 – 06.02.2022

Architectural design in collaboration with Dakis Panayiotou.
Sound design in collaboration with Jazmina Figueroa.

[...] Bellapais Abbey, the ruin of a 13th century monastery in northern Cyprus, is the subject of investigation for the site-specific, Virtual Reality installation Transmundane Economies. Testament to many lives, following the different colonial periods over the centuries, the monastery went through changes, architectural but also cultural, organizational and operational. The artist address the long-lasting, shape-shifting history of Bellapais Abbey to discuss the codes and hierarchies that have been established and inscribed into it over the years. Visitors to the exhibition are immersed in the partial reconstruction, based on drawings by George Jeffrey from 1912, of the monastery’s Gothic refectory by means of VR technology. The virtual architecture, which in its digital translation appears to be sacred yet free of Christian intentions, in turn exposes the socio-political fabrication of the monastery. [...]

Beyond Matter at ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (DE)

08.07.2021 – 08.11.2021

Architectural design in collaboration with Eleni Diana Elia.
Sound Design by Andreas Yakovlev Michaelides.

Invited in the framework of the cooperation project
Beyond Matter.

[...] Taking ZKM as a site of inquiry, this VR site- specific installation becomes a place where ritual, ideology and architecture are shifted to reflect the non-religious, the sexual, and the everyday in conversation with the ideological architecture of the museum itself. The vinyl floor plan acts as a visual anchor, signaling the boundaries of the virtual realm while confusing the symbolic and material boundaries of the museum. Participants are invited to find new ways to compromise within these reconfigured spaces. Some may experience the work not through the VR headsets but through the intimacy and voyeurism of watching others. [...]

Cyprus Pavilion at Venice Architecture 2021, La Biennale di Venezia (IT)

05.22.2021 – 11.21.2021

Curators: Era Savvides and Nasios Varnavas (Urban Radicals), Marina Christodoulidou, Evagoras Vanezis

Contributors: Serhan Ahmet-Tekbas, Thanasis Ikonomou, Mariza Daouti, Eftychios Savvidis, Eleni Diana Elia, Kleanthis Rousos, Charis Nika, Sebastian Koukkides, Eleonora Antoniadou, Nayia Savva, Christophoros Kyriakides, Orestis Kyriakides, Dakis Panayiotou, Theodoulos Polyviou, Veronika Antoniou, Teresa Tourvas, Natalie Savva, Mark Rist, Rania Francis, Gergana Popova, Regner Ramos, Kleanthis Kyriakou, Brian Torres, Emilio Koutsoftides, Gabor Stark

Exhibitors: Urban Radicals
Soundscape: Yiannis Christofides
Dance-as-design: Georgia Tegou, Michalis Theophanous

[...] ‘Desire Lines’ is a site-specific VR installation in which elements from mnemonic techniques (dating back to Renaissance times and involving esoteric ‘walking throughs’), technopaganism, and experimental psychology studies (such as 'The Doorway Effect’) are being referenced. Ecclesiastical and colonial architectural semiotics, often inscribed in Cypriot building facade features are also present. Temporal walls and metal studs widely used in building constructions of domestic and social spaces are virtually exposed in an attempt to deconstruct and amalgamate the private, the public space, the man-made and the sociopolitical into one syncretic sanctuary.
[...]