Antonio Manuel: Occupations/Discoveries

This book was produced following an exhibition curated by myself at the Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia, Cyprus. The curatorial premise was that of transposing work produced in a culturally specific context into another.

In this instance a major installation originally conceived in relation of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of Brazil gained new meaning once it was produced within the divided city of Nicosia. The artist himself was fascinated by the resonance that the broken walls of the buffer zone in Nicosia had with his work. The press coverage as well as the public reception that the work received centred therefore on the local political conflict between the Turkish speaking North and the Greek speaking South of the island.

The installation was accompanied by other works that could equally be interpreted within the Nicosian context inviting new ‘transnational’ readings for a production that was hitherto inextricably linked to the political history of Brazil.

The book contains images from the exhibition, an essay written by myself, documentation of a performance, an interview with the artist, and stills from one of his films. Due to the very premise of the exhibition it was felt that, other than English the publication should contain both Greek and Turkish translations of all texts.

Current Research

My research contributes to the ongoing debate on strategies for rewriting the history of so-called 'peripheral cultures'. Recent debate on curatorial practice for example, has focused on the problems that exhibitions have in escaping the essentialising processes that they have traditionally imposed upon other national creative productions. On the one hand, such a focus has been a positive consequence of the emergence of such issues within the academic field of cultural, historical and postcolonial studies. On the other hand, the increased attention to such histories and practices has also brought with it attitudes towards display that inscribe themselves within a 'rhetoric of universal inclusion': a 'politically correct' move that promotes the ideal of multiculturalism by maintaining such production isolated in its difference. The strategy I have adopted as both curator and art historian operates within the context of both national and international modern art movements. Its methodology is based on the investigation of shifts in the interpretation and presentation of both visual and written work. This generally includes comparative enquiries into the work's reception inside and outside national borders. The intention is to create a platform for an art historical discussion that incorporates international cultural phenomena without dismissing the particularities of local histories

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