Marina Xenofontos. Play Life

Through her sculptures, found objects, light installations, writing and films, Marina Xenofontos interrogates the material manifestations of memory and history. For her show in the Espace Projet, she explores the question of space, both virtual and real.

A sculptor who works in multiple modes, Marina Xenofontos addresses the material manifestations of ideology and knowledge, based on both her personal archives and the historical context of Cyprus, where she was born. She conceives her sculptures and readymades as tangible traces through which social and political transitions can be read. As she puts it, “I set about with an interest in materials, symbols, and elements that are not necessarily connected on a formal level, but are rather entangled by ties in history and politics. These may be found objects that I reform or modify to glean new meaning, or further concentrate the associations inherent in them.”

Trained in sculpture at Bard College in New York state after studying at Goldsmiths, University of London, Xenofontos (born 1988 in Limassol, Cyprus) lives and works in Athens. She has had residencies at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris (2022) and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2018-19.)

Recent and forthcoming solo shows include: It Rests to the Bones, Cyprus Pavilion, 61st Venise Biennale (2026); Things We Lost, Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2025); View From Somewhere Near, Kunstverein Hamburg (2024); In Practice, SculptureCenter, New York (2023); Public Domain, Camden Art Centre, London (2023); Carousel, AKWA IBOM, Athens (2022); I heard that there are many things in life that we can go beyond, La Plage, Paris (2022); and I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, The Island Club, Limassol (2021). She was awarded the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize for her presentation at Frieze London 2022.
Xenofontos is a founding member of the collective and artist-run-space Neoterismoi Toumazou in Nicosia (Cyprus).

Exhibition curator: Nicole Schweizer, contemporary art curator, MCBA

Publication:
Nicole Schweizer (éd.), Marina Xenofontos. Play Life, with contributions by Maya Tounta, Kyriakos Kiriakides, Marina Xenofontos with Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis, and Nicole Schweizer
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2026, Coll. Espace Projet, n° 7, Fr./Engl.

Credits: ©Marina Xenofontos