The Circus and the Museum of History and Archaeology of the Urals feature the artwork

Weeper Capuchin (2020)

Series of 13 photos. Archival pigment print, 40 × 26 cm and 26 × 40 cm. Courtesy of the artist

A series of photographic works is based on a claim made by the German writer, poet and literary historian Winfried Georg Sebald in his book Austerlitz, first published in 2001. Referring to another famous English author, John Berger, Sebald argues that “captive animals and we ourselves, their human counterparts, view one another across a narrow abyss of incomprehension.”

In his work, Stelios Kallinikou explores this space between humans and animals, striving to offer a bridge that hovers over the void. The expressive eyes of the Capuchins, as if carrying a prehistoric melancholy, exchange glances with the viewer through a thick glass wall, as invisible in photographs and a photographic lens.

Stelios Kallinikou presents us with sequences of imagery, flowing into interlaced dialogues, whilst exploring the nexus between the narrative limitations of photography and consciousness. His images appear mythological and archaeologically proto-human, connecting something primordial to the present by narrativizing the body’s connection with the earth. Worlds are constructed at an introspective, meditative pace, and then act as speculative scenarios through which the intersections between territorial and ideological notions relating to 'landscape'-such as space/place and time/history - are explored.

His work has been presented in solo and group shows at Kunsthalle Baden Baden in 2021; Grey Noise, Dubai in 2021; Saigon in Athens, in 2020; Phenomenon artist residency program/exhibition, Αnafi, Greece, in 2019; MOMus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography in 2019; Nimac (Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre), Nicosia, Cyprus in 2018 and 2019; Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2018; APHF, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece, in 2017; Point Centre of Contemporary art in Nicosia, Cyprus in 2017 and 2019; Equilibrists, a show organized by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece, in 2016.

Kallinikou was a resident at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany in 2018 to 2019. In 2019 he was selected as a Foam Talent. He is the co-founder of Thkio Ppalies Artist-led Project Space, based in Nicosia, Cyprus.