Haris Epaminonda: VOL. XXII

In her Aspen Art Museum exhibition, Berlin-based, Cypriot-born artist Haris Epaminonda expands on her practice of carefully arranging found images, objects, and film/video footage together in space. Interested in how objects’ meanings are transformed when placed in new environments, the artist reorganizes and reconfigures artifacts from different cultures and eras—such as found book pages, textiles, carvings, and statues—into new sculptural and architectural constellations. Developed on-site and in direct response to the gallery architecture, Epaminonda’s work uses abstraction and fragmentation to create new narratives and readings, collapsing the temporal distance between the past and the present. The end result is a subtle transformation of our understanding of material, space, and form.

VOL. XXII was conceived alongside Epaminonda’s recent, ongoing project—in collaboration with Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Cyprus—in which she examines architecture’s ongoing relationship with history, topography, and the construction of narratives. Acting more as an appendix of an imaginary museum, the project comprises a synthesis of multiple architectural elements, ornaments, and details of an interior and exterior scenery. Over time, these various fragments—a column, an entrance, a courtyard—will come together and shape the image of a place.