No Photographs Should be Taken Beyond this Point

Organized by Association of Greek Art Historians AICA Hellas and the National Museum of Contemporary Art "Theorems 2 – About History".
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens

Hundreds of prohibitive signs along the green line, an existent dimension of the otherwise notional illegal border that has been dividing Cyprus for 46 years, attest to an abusive exercise of authority and control. The featured phrases written in various languages emphatically – with the use of red, white and blue colour, exclamation marks and other symbols – dictate to the passer-by not to approach and above all not to photograph or film the area. Two metal signs, uprooted from their real political context and planted in the exhibition space, are stripped bare of their pretended seriousness, and seem like irrational objects on the verge of absurdity. Discreet cameras (lenses) are implanted on their surfaces, which intermittently produces camera sound and flashlight. The work is commenting on how long-term irrational situations of border crossing can turn into mutated hybrid and absurd states and on issues of freedom, of movement and surveillance and on how these have various applications on many different zones of conflict.