Stelios Kallinikou

Departing from the complex residue of colonial history on the island of Cyprus, Cypriot artist Stelios Kallinikou's photographic works Flamingo Theatre (2015) feature migratory birds and fighter jets thundering through the sky. They form poetic choreographies and dissolve the supposed opposition between the state and nature. Through this form of coevality, the British armed forces and the flamingos that repeatedly congregate on their migratory routes in Cyprus become agents of a smoldering geopolitics and its consequences for the ecosystem. In that way, Kallinikou's works emblematically visualize the history of the colonization of Cyprus, a colonization that began in antiquity but continues into the dawning future.

Flamingo Theatre has been exhibited at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in 2021 as part of State and Nature.