Two Days After Forever installation view

74.51.2369, 2015
74.51.2617, 2015
74.51.2458, 2015
74.51.2498, 2015
74.51.2869, 2015
74.51.2870, 2015
74.51.2539, 2015
41.160.417, 2015
74.51.2556, 2015
74.51.2369, 2015
74.51.2542, 2015
74.51.2854, 2015
74.51.2469, 2015
74.51.2566, 2015
74.51.2474, 2015

The context of memory and memorialization,
history, its fragmentation, and its potential
completion are explored in these sculptures.
The works are made out of stones that were
defined as debris during the archaeological
excavation process. Together with earth that
ends up on the spoil heap, they are removed
from the archaeological sites and, unlike
antiques, disposed of, often as a result of
strict protocols tied to the stone’s
relationship to human interaction.
Panayiotou works with a different process,
acquiring these rejected stones and
transforming them into sculptures, while
also making implicit references to the
findings of soldier, diplomat, and amateur
archaeologist Luigi Palma di Cesnola
(United States Consul in Cyprus between
1865–1877, and later first director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art) on the island
of Cyprus. Presented here, the objects end
up forming a different kind of antiquity,
seeking to critically explore the role of the
readymade through the act of creation and
destruction. The naming of these antique
sculptures mirrors the labeling of each work
in the collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art from which Panayiotou has
sculpted onto those disposed stones specific
details. The collection allegedly contains
fakes ordered to be made by traditional
sculptors by Cesnola himself while in
Cyprus. Here the question of hierarchy,
value, and authenticity are critiqued.