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Christodoulos Panayiotou: I have never participated in the carnival's organized activities, nor have I ever joined in the parade. I never understood the motive nor did I feel the festive impulse that many carnival participants can describe so comfortably. To be honest, I have never believed in it because I have never quite seen this impulse realized, especially in the parade, which was the focus of my last work. My own observations and my research in the related photographic archives have made something evident: in the past few years, the preparations for the carnival have become a kind of imposed and somehow covered up melancholy. This feeling becomes, I think, even more intense in the children. It might be a projection, but I get the impression that the carnival parades of Limassol have acquired the rehearsed character of our own archaeology. The parade is a kind of revelation of everything we would like to be, of everything we know we cannot be, and of everything we cannot afford to accept that we are.

NC: The way you put it is quite interesting. For me, the event has a totally different significance. When I was a child, my siblings and I used to look forward to the preparations for the carnival parade with great impatience. They lasted three months. For us, this was a spectacular manifestation of creativity. My aunt was a member of the carnival's organizing committee. So it goes without saying that my grandfather's house became an artistic workshop—a universe of costumes, masks, and various painted and decorated parts, which were intended to adorn the floats. We were all fervently enthusiastic about dressing up and taking part in the parade. I never thought of a dull description such as yours.

CP: The distinction between our experiences may come as a result of our generational difference, which shades our perceptions of both the local—Limassol—and the national—Cyprus. In a way, this difference represents Cyprus as two totally different experiences. I grew up in the 1990s, at a time when Cyprus was—and still is—in the process of constituting a text with many unclear lines, complicated references, and cryptic intentions. I am referring to a time when Cyprus seemed confused. You grew up in a "potentially" high-spirited Cyprus, characterized by imagination and the force of its own efforts of self-definition. After all, your Cyprus was looking ahead, whereas I was raised in a country whose gaze cannot but turn to the past, however unclear, so that it may manage to look forward again one day—which seems to start happening now. It is this variation in the experience of the same landscape and its historical perception that gives a different tone to our works.

NC: For your work Wonder Land, you chose pictures of Disney floats. You focus more on the popular aspects of the carnival aesthetics than on its mainstream and classical themes, such as colombinas, harlequins, samba dancers or even its satirical elements. This is certainly no random choice.

CP: When I began my research at the carnival parade's archives, the unusually large number of Disney-themed floats, costumes, and masks struck me. It seemed to become a dominant form of cultural expression in recent years. I could not quite understand it. Going through the archives more methodically, I realized that this trend has lasted with undiminished fervor for twenty years. I interpreted it as an indication of a kind of popular, subversive reformatting of the official aims of the parade, which presents itself as a continuation of the Hellenic tradition, in both historical and mythological terms. I then tried to isolate the many Disney themed photographs, as I realized that their inner logic reflects my concept of the complexity of the island's identity.

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NC: Just recently, I wrote a text about the Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca. I was impressed by his insistent denunciation of any political implications in his work. While other critics were quick to associate his production with the dictatorship period, he attributed it to his problematic childhood. Might a similar interpretation be valid for your work too?

CP: I don’t denounce anything. I am interested in human nature and its manifestations. This, in itself, is something deeply political. Much so-called political art is simply an attempt to make political philology through the use of political iconography. This is a rhetorical representation of the existent political rhetoric, which seems vain and unappealing. My work comes together as a result of existential and social reflections, which I regard as deeply political.

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