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Duration 
6.12.2019-6.1.2020

NAPK- The title, an acronym for Nazgol Ansarinia Phanos Kyriacou, signals the coming to- gether of two artists from the same generation, one living in Teheran and the other in Nico- sia, who have never met or influenced each other.The show features a collection of three sculptures by Phanos Kyriacou, and three framed works and one sculpture by Nazgol Ansarinia. This site-specific show, from a certain wholistic point of view, focuses on temporary spatial connections and correspondences, direct and indirect, accidental or intentional,
arbitrary and mystical, between the selected works. While the show suggests a relationship that does not exist, questions in parallel the possibility of a slow, progressive dialogue and examines via this dialogue and those very dialectic principles, if any space is truly left for mystery within an ultra-connected, self-aware, self-conscious, globalised
world, ''united'' via ideology, politics, internet and the press. In other words, via this semi- controlled temporary spatial meeting of the two artists, what that is this time a priority, is what is left rightfully unsaid - indeed visually profane, thus resisting to be automatically translated, decodified, or be manipulated as another art narrative and cultural commodity of our era. The visitor is invited to see the works but also to seek, if there is something in common between the two artists sensibility - no matter the fact that their chosen visual strategies might not be categorised or classified as of the same kind - as the two artists might not even follow similar logic or share a common discipline, while their own work stays fluid and evolves over time, having variations and developments in between the corpus of works, already separated in thematic series and periods.                 
                      Nazgol Ansarinia, born in 1979 in Tehran graduated from the London College of Communication in 2001 before taking a Master of Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco in 2003. Her work examines the systems and networks that underpin her daily life such as everyday objects, routines, events and experiences, and the relationship they form to a larger social context. Born and raised in Tehran, Ansarinia’s practice reflects upon tensions between private worlds and the wider socioeconomic realm, and how local iterations of a culture might act as a site for the hopes and fears of those living in a (faltering) globalised word. Ansarinia often seeks to reveal the ‘inner workings of a social system’ by taking its components apart and putting them together again, to uncover assumptions, connections and underlying rules of engagement. Her practice is characterised by an emphasis on research and analysis that can be traced back to her background in design, and engagement with critical theory. Her mode of working covers diverse media—video, three- dimensional objects, found street signs and drawings—and subjects as varied as automated telephone systems, American security policy, memories associated with a family house, and the patterns of Persian carpets. Selected exhibitions include: Epic Iran, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (upcoming); Nazgol Ansarinia: The Room Becomes a Street, curated by Aram Moshayedi Argo Factory - Pejman Foundation, Tehran, Iran (2019); Fragile Frontiers: Visions on Iran’s in/visible borders, YARAT Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan (2019); Revolution Begins at Home, with Architects Hamed Khosravi and Roozbeh Elias-Azar, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah , UAE (2019); The Spark is You: Parasol Unit in Venice, curated by Ziba Ardalan, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2019); Remnants, curated by Sara Alonso Gómez, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2018); Slice and Dice, curated by Gregory Lang, Iréne Laub Gallery, Brussles, Belgium (2018); Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge, Yinchuan Biennale, Yinchuan, China (2018); Only the morning bird, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2018); Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition, Katonah Museum of Art, New York, USA (2018);Demolishing buildings, buying waste, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2018); Women House, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., USA (2018); Fragments, Particles and the Mechanisms of Growth, KIOSK, Ghent, Belgium (2017); Women House, Monnaie de Paris, Paris, France (2017); What We Know that We Don’t Know, KADIST, San Francisco, USA (2017); Planet 9, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2017); Variable Dimensions, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal (2017); Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, Aga Khan Museum, Canada (2017); The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju Bienniale, Gwangju, Korea (2016); Schnitt Schnitt (Cut Cut), Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2016); Metatextile: Ruptured Narratives, Exchanged Values, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2016); Paper Trail, Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy (2016); Surfaces & Solids, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2015); DUST at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowsku Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2015); Investment Opportunities at the Office Gallery, Cyprus (2015); Adventure of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2015); Longing Persia, Exchange and reception of art in Persia and Europe in the 17th Century & Contemporary Art from Tehran, Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland (2013); Safar/Voyage, The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2013); When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA (2013); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2012);
A Permanent Record For Future Investigation, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2012); and Interior Renovations, Tehran, 2010, Green Cardamom, London, UK (2011).


Phanos Kyriacou, born in Nicosia 1977 graduated from the Middlesex School of Fine Arts in 2001 before taking a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University, London in 2007. He co-represented Cyprus at the 55th Venice Biennale and he is a co-founder and director of the Artist- run gallery PARTY Contemporary. Through the use of the sculptural and the filmic, Phanos Kyriacou’s practice involves the setting up of encounters that restructure commonsensical ideations of the relations between objects, information and society. Embracing paradox, the histories of the ad-hoc and the exceptions on which the exemplary rests, he often collaborates with local Cypriot craftsmen in order to elaborate a materialism of alternatives. His interest lies in utilising both the urban and the gallery space as sites of antagonistic flows, where rapturous rearrangements of signs create surfaces of urgency. Using the fragment as a tactical ally, his sculptures often host found and made objects. Kyriacou exhaustingly carries over the (ar)rhythmic congeniality of fragments into taxonomies that energise a semiotics of (g)hosting, visually translating moments that elicit the potentiality of inbetweenness.
He had a number of solo presentations including: 2019 “a kind of there, there” curated by Evagoras Vanezis, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia | 2018 “ Garden Sculptures” Eins Gallery, Limassol | 2017 “This Case is in Process of Arrangement” Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, “Exhaustion” Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia | 2015 “Daily Life” Maccarone, New York, “Who is Nathan?”, Rupert, Vilnius, “The Adventures of a Giant Midget” Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia | 2014 “view to river from north” Maccarone, New York | 2013 “Between a woman and a mountain” The Temporary Museum, Nicosia, Cyprus | 2012 “Intimate long shot” curated by Androulla Michael at Chypre Culture, Paris , “corners concrete pine wood man standing”’ Kinderhook&Caracas, Berlin | 2011 “Everyone should walk’ curated by Tanja Schomaker, Salon Popular Berlin, “On Handling Considered as one of the Fine Arts” Kreuzberg Pavilion, Berlin, “I am going to have to disappoint you” curated by Lorenzo Sandoval, Altes Finamzant, Berlin, “Glimpses and observations” Glogauair Residency Program Berlin | 2010 “It was an odd, almost unreal landscape, not without a certain beauty” Omikron Gallery, Nicosia | 2009 “Crash helmets must be removed’ at APOTHEKE / Nicosia. He has also participated in a number of group exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad including: 2019 “ Attempts to Escape”, curated by Maria Stathi, Art Seen, Nicosia, A Cloud Passing Over Cairo, the Office Galley, Nicosia | 2018 “Adhocracy Vol 1: Books and Tools”, curated by Natalie Yiaxi and Phanos Kyriacou, Party Contemporary, Nicosia | 2017 “The garden sees” curated by Anna Kafetsi, Athens Concert Hall Garden, Athens | 2016 ”completely something else” curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia / “One , No One and One Hundred Thousand” curated by Luca lo Pinto, Kunsthalle Vienna | 2014 “Non-standard testimonials,” curated by Peter Eramian, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow | 2013 Oo – The Cyprus / Lithuan Paviilion curated by Raimundas Malašauskas at the 55th Venice Biennale, “Fusiform Gyrus” curated by Raimundas Malašauskas at Lisson Gallery | 2012 “Blind spot” at the Grimm Museum curated by Silvia Ploner, Berlin, “Urban-A-Where curated by Socratis Stratis” at Casteliotissa, Nicosia, “Mapping Cyprus – Contemporary Views” curated by Androula Michael at Bozar, Brussels | 2011 “Terra MeIditerranea- In Crisis” curated by Yiannis Toumazis at NiMAC, Nicosia, “The location of culture”, curated by Pavlina Paraskevaidou at Pulchri Studio, The Netherlands | 2010 “Chypre 2010, L’art aupresent”, Espace Commines, Paris, France curated by Yiannis Toumazis & Andri Michael | 2009 “Synergia” with Angelos Makridis curated by Yiannis Toumazis at the Cyprus Archaeological Museum.