“Τhe pretext of painting”: Variations on the Collection of Ivi Meleagrou

“The pretext of painting”: Variations on the Collection of Ivi Meleagrou invites visitors to explore the personal art collection of seminal Cypriot author, Ivi Meleagrou (1928–2019), once housed in her family home in Agios Andreas, Nicosia. Featuring paintings by key Cypriot artists from the 1960s to the 1980s, together with sculptures, prints, reproductions, and embroideries, the collection reflects Meleagrou’s deep affinities with other artists and intellectuals of her time, while also revealing her highly idiosyncratic relationship to the visual arts and collecting: fluid, non-hierarchical, intuitive, and moving freely across the divide between originals and reproductions. The exhibition is shaped by an experimental dramaturgy and unfolds through a dynamic process: visitors choose works from a catalogued list to be retrieved, displayed, and taken back into the storage station, generating an exhibition in constant flux. 

The exhibition was conceived through a dialogue between Christodoulos Panayiotou and Androula Kafa of The Island Club, curator Evagoras Vanezis and architect Eleonora Antoniadou, who also supervised the architectural and scenographic design. It is activated by the performative interventions of Ioli Kaskani, Petros Konnaris, Nicola Mitropoulou, Belinda Papavasiliou, Eva Papavasiliou, Elena Savvidou, Melina Sofokleous. Graphic design by Adonis Archontides. The cataloguing of Ivi Meleagrou's collection was carried out by Evagoras Vanezis and Kyriakos Theocharous, while Atelier de Papier - Paraskevi Loizou took care of the cleaning and preventive conservation of the works. The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of Eleni Meleagrou and the collaboration of Yorgos Taxiarchopoulos, artistic director of the Limassol Municipal Arts Center - Apothikes Papadaki.

With special thanks to Lefteris Papaleontiou for kindly granting the rights to the timeline of Ivi Meleagrou’s life and work, and to Belinda Papavasiliou and Petros Konnaris for their input in developing the performance score. With gratitude to Eleni Meleagrou for her collaboration at every stage of the preparation of the exhibition.

The pretext of painting: Variations on the Collection of Ivi Meleagrou takes place in parallel with The Room of Ivi Meleagrou, a multimedia exhibition built around a virtual reality reconstruction of the author’s private room, presented at the Centre of Performing Arts MITOS.

Ivi Meleagrou

Ivi Meleagrou (Nicosia 1928–2019) stands amongst the most important novelists of Cypriot literature and she is a pioneer in renewing prose writing. She was a founding member and editor-in-chief of the periodical Kypriaka Chronika (1960–1972), collaborated with newspapers, and was also the first announcer of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation. For her novel Eastern Mediterranean (1969) she was awarded the State Prize for Fiction, while its sequel, Penultimate Season, was also distinguished in Cyprus (1982) as well as in Greece (1983). Alongside her literary work, she developed an active political and social engagement as president of the Central Committee of Women’s Organizations after 1974, with a presence in Cyprus and abroad on issues of occupation, displacement, and women’s rights. In 2014, she was honored with the G.P. Pierides Prize for her overall contribution to literature.