Haris Epaminonda’s first major exhibition in the UK centres on the newly commissioned film Chapters, 2013. Filmed in remote Cyprus landscape, Chapters is a poetic series of meticulously staged scenes with underlying narrative elements of love, longing, afterlife and ritual. The scenes are independent and run in a non-consecutive order, with narrative evoked by the actions of the performers. The static frame of the camera shapes the film as a continuously evolving series of ‘pictures’ or ‘tableaux’. The film draws together a spectrum of cultural influences, inspired by myths, ancient poetry, theatre and painting. Highlighting how the construction of the film was informed by her current practice, Epaminonda describes the work as an object that continuously moves – a sculpture without a fixed form.
The soundtrack to Chapters was composed by British sound artists, Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides (Kelly Jayne Jones and Pascal Nichols). The artists parallel the methods used by Epaminonda in constructing the film, by piecing together sounds recorded on set with samples they produced using instruments from various eras.
The subsequent rooms act as chambers containing a sparse arrangement of sculptural works, including both found and constructed objects. These relate to the logic of the film, such as its symbolic and formal aspects, yet they are also a continuation of her ongoing series Volumes, which began in 2009.
Haris Epaminonda was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1980, and now lives and works in Berlin. She works across a variety of media from collage to film, multi-layered installation to sculpture.
Chapters is co-produced by Modern Art Oxford, Kunsthaus Zürich, Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia, and the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice.
