Double Feature: Theodoulos Polyviou

Spanning video, sculpture, archival objects, photography, and prints, Double Feature: Theodoulos Polyviou introduces the  third chapter of the artist’s series  Transmundane Economies (2022–ongoing) to Germany. In this series, Polyviou deploys digital technologies like virtual reality and CGI filmmaking to study, reconstruct, and fill in historical gaps of Cypriot cultural heritage. His speculative approach circumvents nationalist agendas by offering alternative ways to revisit the historical complexities of the island and to imagine its future.  

The central site-responsive video installation A Palace in Exile (2024) was produced in collaboration with architectural designer Loukis Menelaou as the culmination of Polyviou’s long-term research. The video consists of computer-generated images that switch between the Julia Stoschek Foundation in the present and Cyprus in the 1950s, a decade characterized by ethnic and nationalist tensions in the process of gaining independence from British colonial rule.  

The exhibition opens up one of Polyviou’s key interests: how architectures and technologies together have the potential to engender ritual and sacred experiences. Creating virtual spaces within actual architectures, he invites us to enter environments that expand our understandings of identity and belonging, and place us in hybrid worlds where past, present, and future collide.  

Double Feature—a series of solo presentations where each artist’s work is on view at JSF Berlin and Düsseldorf simultaneously—is curated by Line Ajan and Lisa Long, and supported by Team Global.  

A Palace in Exile was produced by Fondazione Elpis in Milan, where it premiered in spring 2024.  

About the Julia Stoschek Foundation
The Julia Stoschek Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the public presentation, advancement, conservation, and scholarship of time-based art. With two public exhibition spaces located in Berlin and Düsseldorf that feature cutting-edge media and performance practices, the foundation stewards one of the world’s most comprehensive private collections of time-based art.

With over 900 artworks by 300 artists from around the globe, the Julia Stoschek Collection spans video, film, single- and multi-channel moving image installation, multimedia environments, performance, sound, and virtual reality. Photography, sculpture, and painting supplement its time-based emphasis. The collection’s contemporary focus is rooted in artists’ moving image experiments from the 1960s and ’70s.

Press contact: press@jsfoundation.art.