Press Releases

The Department of Contemporary Culture of the Deputy Ministry of Culture announces that in the 19^th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (Biennale Architettura 2025 www.labiennale.org, http://cyprusinvenice.org.cy) Cyprus will be represented by a group consisting of the architect Sevina Floridou, co-curators Nicola Mitropoulou and Clara Zinecker, assistant architect Aaron Gatt, the artists/researchers’ collective Fisherwomxn (Miriam Gatt, Ioulita Toumazi and Seta Astreou Karides) and artisans of TERRACT Salamiou. The group’s proposal is entitled (To the Stones) - we lent you our breath, and you whispered it back to the earth.

The proposal was selected through an open call to select a curator, launched by the Deputy Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Cyprus Architects Association (CAA). The proposals submitted within this framework were reviewed by an eight-member committee consisting of representatives of the Deputy Ministry and CAA (Alkis Dikaios, architect, president of CAA, Yiannis Agisilaou, architect, Eleonora Antoniadou, architect, Petros Dymiotis, cultural officer of the Department of Contemporary Culture, Pavlos Feraios, architect, Phanos Kyriakidis, architect, Louli Michaelidou, Cultural Officer A’ of the Department of Contemporary Culture and Andreas Palallas, architect).  

Selection Rationale:

The Committee appreciated the proposal's intention to bring to the forefront overlooked manual construction practices, essentially reclaiming the knowledge of ancient methods of sustainable (in the contemporary sense of the word) management of natural resources. By elevating the construction process to a ritualistic ceremony of communal participation, the proposal succeeds in connecting critically and organically with the thematic core of the Biennale.

In the group’s own words:

(To the Stones) we lent you our breath, and you whispered it back to the earth (title inspired by the chorus of stones, in Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice).

A way of redefining ‘evolution’, but also devolution, materializes in a future located in the past and present, which is grounded in the communal constitution of the empathic. The resulting emotions, which are rarely encompassed in architecture or spatial design, may be characterised through physical elements but they may equally be thoughts, desires and fears which are projected onto the landscape around us.

By echoing practices of drystone terracing, the exhibition proposes a return of the bodies and utilities of communality. Through the process of (re)construction and the performative gestures this entails, a collectively constructed future is offered that is inherently concerned with ethics, politics of space and its handling.

Tracing rhythms of drystone, we determine an operational chain – of gathering, (re)assembling and placing. This chain leads to a shifting paradigm, from what designed space may portray to what it might do or be - that is, of how these relationships invert monumentality, de-centering pre-existing 'top-down' hierarchies and approaches.

Terraced landscape is not just about stones but becomes a meeting point between the generations that preceded us and the future that lies ahead of us. By witnessing the attendance and devotion bestowed upon moving stones in the terraced landscape, we are confronted with our own transience, allowing for other meanings to emerge that evoke different systems of valuation. Stones and traces on the landscape become active mechanisms of containing knowledge, an archive of centuries of communal labour, even instruments that measure spatial possibilities. These systems also bear poetic value; where the geological, the natural world and the human imagination converge (Macfarlane, R. (2008) Mountains of the mind: a history of a fascination. Paperback ed. London: Granta Books).

The 19^th edition of the Biennale Architettura directed by architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, will take place from May 10^th till November 23^rd 2025 under the general theme “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective”. According to Ratti «The title Intelligens is linked to the modern term “intelligence,” but it also evokes a wider set of associated meanings. In fact, the final syllable, “gens” is Latin for “people”. A new, fictional root emerges, suggesting a future of intelligence that is inclusive, multiple, and imaginative beyond today’s limiting focus on AI. […]

The built environment is one of the largest contributors to atmospheric emissions, placing architecture among the main culprits in the degradation of our planet. As the climate crisis accelerates, must we resign ourselves to this role, or are we still able to offer solutions, substantial and non-cosmetic, effective and quick to achieve?»

In the upcoming edition, the Cyprus pavilion will be housed, as before, at Associazione Culturale Spiazzi, Castello 3865, 30124 Venezia, close to the Arsenale – one of the two main exhibition venues of the Biennale Architettura. Complete exhibition programme to follow.

The 19^th edition of the event opens on 8 May 2025 for the Media and accredited professionals, and on 10 May for the public.  

Biographies:

Sevina Floridou

Sevina Floridou is a Cypriot architect and cultural heritage researcher. Publications include how the island’s two main cultures, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot come together (Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Malta, 1998); Dervishes and women’s rituals in Limassol (CVAR, 2022); Landscape, Interaction and irrigation, (Glasgow University, Oxbow 2013); citizen-participatory project ‘Coming Together in Moutallos’, 2017 Paphos European Cultural Capital (with Hadjisoteriou and Petrou, Routledge, 2019); modernity, conflict and resilience in Nicosia’s Ottoman baths (Saqi Press, 2019). She teaches cultural heritage at Nicosia University since 2014.

Historic research informs contemporary architectural works: ‘Oroklini coastal walkway’ (with M. Danou, State award, Phaidon, 2004); ‘The Olive Grove’, an open-air music performance space (2005); The Koudounari 19th c. mansion, Limassol (2016); Limassol Municipal Art Center (2019, BRAU 5, 2021), UNDP bicommunal conservations.

She is a member of ITLA (International Terraced Landscape Alliance, with publications (Vol. 1 Num. 1 2021). Support from Laona Foundation and ITLA has led to projects all over rural Cyprus, integrating local knowledge into educational and art-curated activities, which engage a wider public. 2023 and 2024 saw ETL “European Terraced Landscapes” workshops, mapping terraced routes and identifying unique aspects of terraces.

Nicola Mitropoulou

Nicola Mitropoulou (b. on the shores of the Mediterranean) is an artist and curator based in Cyprus whose practice exists in a perpetual state of flux. Her work considers the dialectics of fluidity, intertwining elements of performativity and collective praxis to negotiate current spatiotemporal peripheries. Her projects unfold in the form of collaborative research, exhibitions, writing and performance.

Clara Zinecker

Clara Zinecker is a researcher, engaging in collective research projects, navigating the intersection of border studies and ecology. Her engagements materialise in various forms including writing, activism and artistic practice. Since 2018 she has worked with activist groups in solidarity with people on the move. In 2021 she became an active member of the Border Violence Monitoring Network, as part of which she has conducted and coordinated research on the funding and forms of violence inherent to borders and their increasing technologization. She is currently pursuing a degree in political science and public law at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, where her research investigates the violent entanglements of human and non-human actants to enforce borderscapes, spatially focusing on her immediate locality, which for the last two years has been Cyprus.

Aaron Gatt

Aaron Gatt is an architect currently participating in the Young Engineers Practice Program at AMS Architects. He graduated summa cum laude (9.74 GPA) from the University of Cyprus in 2024. During his studies, he spent a semester at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki as an Erasmus student and interned at the office of the architect Diomedes Myrianthefs in 2022, contributing to the documentation of historical churches in Cyprus. Aaron also has a strong interest in archaeology, focusing on historical graffiti. In 2022, he participated in the documentation of the submerged Amathus port, a collaboration between Aix-Marseille University and the University of Cyprus as part of a PhD project. In 2023, Aaron interned at the Cyprus Institute’s STARC at APAC Labs. Under Mia Gaia Trentin’s coordination, he worked on the “Medieval and Early Modern Graffiti in Cyprus” project, documenting graffiti in the 10 UNESCO World Heritage churches in the Troodos range. He also collaborated with Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen to document graffiti in the Chapel of Moulineaux Abbey in France, part of another PhD project.

Fisherwomxn (Miriam Gatt, Ioulita Toumazi & Seta Astreou-Karides)

Fisherwomxn is a group of artists and curators working across the disciplines of writing, publishing and performance to generate critical discourse around feminist and anti-colonial thought. Through their practice they are interested in exploring their personal relationships to these ideas and the way they manifest in our lives in Cyprus and the diaspora, deconstructing the narratives that push and pull us from the places we call home. How can we bear the responsibility of regenerating our lands within our postcolonial realities? How can we find alternative spaces of being together beyond imperialistic structures? At the basis of their practice, there are two pillars: the Fisherwomxn journal and the Streams. The publishing of the journal grapples with the questions that concern them through various forms of creative writing and the book as an artistic practice. Streams are a series of curated gatherings, designed to extend these conversations through artistic interventions such as performances, workshops, open discussions, etc.

 (EK)