Dimitri Ozerkov & Danila Parniouk: We create space for contrast
Source: in-cyprus.com
Art curators Dimitri Ozerkov and Danila Parniouk explain that the PSI Foundation‘s mission extends beyond merely exhibiting art; it seeks to reframe and reinterpret cultural narratives.
How does artificial intelligence intersect with the evolution of modernist architecture in Cyprus, and what role does a specially commissioned installation by renowned British artist Mat Collishaw play in this dialogue? These questions are explored in the exhibition “Tekton,” housed in the modernist former industrial building in Limassol that now serves as the PSI Foundation’s headquarters.
The exhibition utilises the interior of the historic Carob Warehouse as a thematic axis, with the building itself becoming part of the exhibition’s narrative. It is highlighted through the works and legacy of its creators, engineer Andreas Papadopoulos (1922–2009) and architect Phoebus Polydorides (1926–2019). The space reflects on its own history through archives and artistic imagination, proposing a vision for the city’s future.
We posed questions to the exhibition’s two curators, Dimitri Ozerkov and Danila Parniouk, both of whom boast impressive CVs. Russian-born art historian Ozerkov, now Chief Curator of the PSI Foundation, previously served as Director of the Contemporary Art Department at the Hermitage Museum and has curated or organised over 40 exhibitions. He left Russia in 2022.
Belarusian-born, award-winning, and widely traveled photographer Parniouk, currently the Artistic Director of PSI, has participated in more than 50 exhibitions and lived in Barcelona for 10 years before moving to Cyprus in 2022. They chose to respond jointly to our questions, stressing the collective nature of curatorial work in a discussion about architecture, archival memory, and the power of contemporary art.
Is PSI an institution of memory, or of transformation?
PSI Foundation is, at its core, both. We consider memory and transformation not as opposites, but as interdependent forces. Memory grounds us—it acknowledges the layers of history and identity embedded in space. Transformation, meanwhile, is our way of honouring those layers by reactivating them, reinterpreting them, and making them speak to contemporary urgencies. We don’t preserve for nostalgia’s sake; we preserve to ask new questions of old materials. PSI is an institution where memory is always in motion—where architecture, artistic practice, and research come together to continuously reshape the meaning of place.
What responsibility does an art institution have towards its building — especially when that building carries deep historical and symbolic weight?
The Old Carob Warehouse, home of PSI Foundation, is both subject and setting. We believe the structure itself is not just a container; it is a protagonist, a witness, and an active agent in history. With its industrial past tied to the economic, social, and even political development of Limassol, it commands respect—not through preservation as a fossil, but through active engagement. We feel a deep responsibility to acknowledge the building’s scars, textures, and stories, and to use them as curatorial material. The institution acts as a steward, mediator, and amplifier—allowing the building’s legacy to inform programming, and inviting artists and researchers to respond to its specificity.
How did your curatorial instincts respond when you first stood inside the Carob Warehouse?
It was visceral. The vastness, the silence, the traces of past use—the imprint of labour and the ghost of machinery—it all hit me at once. I felt a need to listen first, before doing anything, since the space didn’t ask to be filled; it asked to be understood. My instincts told me to work site-responsively, to think of the curatorial as something closer to architecture: spatial, temporal, and material. It’s a place that resists neutrality. Every intervention here must contend with its weight—historical, symbolic, and sensory. The tone of PSI’s entire ethos can be formulated as follows: to respect the place and let it shape the questions.
Much of Cyprus’ modernist architecture was a silent rebellion against colonial design. In today’s terms, what does cultural rebellion against established norms look like. How does PSI embody it?
Cultural rebellion today often manifests not through loud confrontation, but through reclamation—of space, of narrative, of memory. PSI embodies this spirit by activating a historical industrial structure not as a static relic, but as a dynamic platform for experimentation. We intend to not merely exhibit but to reframe. Through contemporary art, archival research, and community engagement, we challenge linear readings of history. In a city reshaped by commercial real estate, the “Tekton” exhibition is a quiet intellectual insurgency—a refusal to forget.
Can an archive be radical? What surprised you the most while excavating the personal and professional histories of Papadopoulos and Polydorides that forced you to reconsider your curatorial approach?
What surprised us most was the emotional tenor of the material: Papadopoulos’ meticulous work on infrastructure and his faith in the national destiny, and Polydorides’ obsessive mapping of a city he believed in. Both were not just professionals who received substantial education abroad; they were idealists. The name they used for their duo “Tekton”, was an idealist one as well. Realizing that led us to foreground affect and subjectivity in the exhibition—less focus on form, and chronology, more on faith. Our curatorial stance was shifted from historian to witness.
How do you reconcile the modernists’ utopian visions with the reality of divided Cyprus today?
Modernism in Cyprus carried the promise of progress of the newborn independent country, often blind to the complexities of the island’s fractures. Reconciling that tension means accepting that architecture, like ideology, ages. “Tekton” exhibition does not seek to preserve utopias; it interrogates them. We examine the aspirations embedded in concrete and steel, so the exhibition becomes a mirror: not to flatter, but to reflect.
If you could situate one of Polydoridis’ buildings in an architectural context more familiar to you, what unexpected dialogues might arise?
Phoebus Polydorides orchestrated the Cypriot version of Mediterranean modernism, so his buildings could be imagined in almost any country of the region. He asked Andreas Papadopoulos for assistance when a building required complicated engineering work, while the Carob Warehouse, home to the PSI Foundation, is entirely the work of Papadopoulos. In a way, it is a very simple architecture, but it is full of logical solutions of the 1960s, and of practical experience based on actual needs. Unlike its Brutalist counterparts, it was not an architecture of severity, but of adaptation, attuned to local climate, materials, and rhythms. It wasn’t a stylistic statement; it was all about whispering a future.
In “Aftermath” Collishaw uses AI as a narrative medium. Can machines carry the memory of a city the way buildings do? Or is memory still deeply human?
“Aftermath” is the first special commission of the PSI Foundation to an internationally renowned artist. Mat Collishaw came to Limassol to learn the story of the building and the people behind its creation. The music he chose for it, “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten” was composed by Arvo Pärt in 1977 as an elegy to mourn the death of the famous British modernist, who came to Cyprus for vacation. Collishaw combines the “Cantus” with an overwhelming underwater panorama fully generated by AI that is seen as a counterpoint to the archival part of the exhibition. It is obvious that machines can mimic memory, but they cannot be influenced by the reality in the way buildings do when they hold temperature, scent, and echo. What AI offers is a powerful illusion—a synthetic afterlife, an incredible possibility. At PSI, we see AI not as a substitute for memory, but as a prosthetic statement. Collishaw’s “Aftermath” does not replace memory but resurrects the emotional logic of its absence.
How do you navigate the tension between preserving architectural history and embracing technological disruption?
We are aware of the famous paradigm that preservation without innovation ends up in nostalgia, while innovation without roots risks erasure. PSI’s mission is to braid the two: to let an archival voice activate an AI-generated space. The goal is not to resolve the tension, but to choreograph it.
Limassol is vying for the title of European Capital of Culture 2030. What kind of cultural capital does PSI bring to that race?
PSI evokes hidden depth. We try to connect cultural infrastructure to political history, urban memory, and regional resonance. Our work is both site-specific and internationally aware—helping to anchoring Limassol in a wider Mediterranean and European discourse by turning a post-industrial shell into a cultural engine. Immigrants ourselves, we were impressed by discovering how deep the city’s cultural history is and how many people were and are involved in saving the remnants of this history.
How do you interpret the intersection between Cypriot and Russian cultural memory? Do you see echoes, overlaps, or points of creative friction?
There are both echoes and frictions—shared Orthodox heritage, parallel traumas of exile and empire, but also diverging visual languages and political trajectories. PSI sees itself as a meeting ground, not a melting pot. We do not force harmonies but invite different communities to meet. We create space for contrast: for Slavic symbolism to confront Mediterranean minimalism, and for different chronologies to coexist.
How do you envision PSI creating dialogues between Russian and Cypriot cultural narratives without falling into simplistic interpretations?
PSI is a Cypriot, not a Russian initiative. Both of us have a Soviet background (Dimitri in Russia, Danila in Belarus), but we have nothing to do with today’s Russia, so no dialogues are in our plans. PSI is conceived as a place to stage conversations, not to translate cultures. We see it as a cultural crossroads in the world full of tensions, and, in this regard, we fully adhere to the role that Cyprus has played for many centuries.
INFO: The exhibition “Tekton” at the PSI Foundation in Limassol is open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., until 27 July. Free guided tours are available in Greek and English. For more information or to book a tour, please contact +357 94206627 or email [email protected].
The original article: belongs to in-cyprus.com .
