Critical Distance DIRECTORY Marina Xenofontos

Marina Xenofontos’ work employs the mediums of video and sculpture to consider the inevitability of failure and the marginalization of personal narratives within civic spaces. By shaping interpretations and meanings, she explores interrelated facets of simulations, objects, and translations that allow a diagrammatic approach to the remembrance of dysfunctional symbols. Within this approach, traditional methods and processes embrace the ephemeral individual position towards representations of collective memory. In order to unravel the mechanisms of canonical representations, Xenofontos researches vernacular processes related to architectural forms and specific social contexts. Power structures of civic spaces are reimagined by way of exploring anecdotal stories and coincidental epitomes that represent sardonic reflections on mechanisms of production and understandings of history.

Xenofontos studied at Goldsmiths, University of London and Sculpture at Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in NY and she just completed a residency at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2016, she self-published the archive of self-proclaimed inventor and architectural draftsman Christophoros Kyriakides “We are not alone – We are a fly in the milk of infinity.” She is a member of the collective Neoterismoi Toumazou (Neo Toum) that curates a fashion label, artists books and exhibitions. The group has exhibited at Glasgow International in 2016 and was selected as guest of honour by Jan Verwoert in the exhibition The Future of Colour organised by the Cyprus Pavilion in Venice for the Biennale Arte 2017.