No Photographs should be taken beyond this Point

Hundreds of prohibitive signs along the green line, an existent dimension of the otherwise notional illegal border that has been dividing Cyprus for 36 years, attest to an abusive exercise of authority and control. The featured phrases written in various languages emphatically – with the use of red colour, exclamation marks and other symbols – dictate to the passer-by not to approach and above all not to photograph or film the area. In the context of the installation entitled No Photographs Should be Taken beyond this Point the artist placed exact copies of these signs at various points along the borders between the Flemish-speaking Flanders and the German-speaking Walloon. Although the inhabitants are well aware of the borders between the two regions, their existence is signalled only by a few conventional road signs. Uprooted from their real political context and deliberately planted in a country where division is nothing but typical, the Cypriot signs are stripped bare of their pretended seriousness and seem like irrational objects on the verge of absurdity. (Andrea Costantinou, Tempus, Klitsa Antoniou, On the Routes of Contemporary Art, Tempus Arti: Klitsa Antoniou, 2009)