Marina Xenofontos's Cyprus Pavilion at Venice Biennale Explores Memory and Haunting

The Cyprus Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale features Marina Xenofontos's exhibition "It rests to the bones," curated by Kyle Dancewicz. The show transforms the pavilion into an "unconditional archive," drawing on the artist's personal and collective memories of Cyprus. Works include "Interior of a Nightclub," a replica of the modernist ceiling from the Perroquet nightclub in Varosha, a ghost town evacuated after the 1974 Turkish invasion, accompanied by an audio piece featuring songs performed by the Ayisilaou sisters. The courtyard displays a pile of monobloc chairs, recovered from production errors at Lordos Plastics, alongside a traditional wooden and straw chair reminiscent of Cypriot kafenia. A separate room houses "Threads," 21 rotating copper cylinders, referencing Cyprus's copper economy and colonial history. The exhibition also includes "Passer," an animatronic sparrow with a torn chest, symbolizing endurance amid pain. Xenofontos's practice, rooted in readymade and decontextualization, infuses everyday objects with psychological and political resonances, addressing the unresolved trauma of Cyprus's division. The artist describes her work as an "unconditional archive," an oxymoron that underscores an ethical stance toward the neglected and forgotten. The exhibition engages with haunting, as theorized by Avery Gordon, to reveal how repressed histories persist in the present.