Homo Triticus was an installation in the exhibition “Trauma & Therapy, Cypriot Antiquity and Contemporary Art” at the Pafos Archaeological Museum, 10/10/2014 – 28/2/2015. The organiser of the exhibition was the European Capital of Culture Pafos 2017 . The ex-Artis Cultural Association produced the project. The curator was Art historian Dr Niki Loizidou.
Homo Triticus at the Pafos Archaeological Museum
“Rinos Stefani is the only artist who wished to combine the two meanings of the verb ‘therapevo’ (θεραπεύω = to cure), by creating a most imaginative construction and giving it the title Homo Triticus. As an artist, he himself cures art and his art (the particular work). He associatively activates a total of symbolisms related to the cycle of land fruition, the determining character of the cycle of human life. But also the motifs Stefani uses relate to his previous work, like the cruciform dancers and masks.
Water and earth
Rinos Stefani as a child used to play often with water and earth (clay). In fact these were his first toys. Therefore the selection of exhibits that would inspire him could be none other than the room with the exhibits of the Neolithic period. In that room, there is a window display with seeds that ancient Cypriots were cultivating. There is also a construction which resembles a epitaphic table. Its upper part consists of a frame-grave with earthly material. Inside lays a human skeleton from the year 3000 BC from Lemba. As Stefani says, the conception of the idea behind Homo Triticus starts from the combination of these two exhibits.
However, in relation to them, Stefani’s installation is closer to a dialogue than a juxtaposition of opposites. The planted (with wheat seeds) green man is wearing a mask-funnel. And he is connected to a bigger funnel filled with wheat seeds through a plastic pipe. High up on a metallic stick Stefani placed a funnel. This is alluding to an I.V. tube over a patient’s bed in a hospital. Life and death, the rebirth of nature and decay, illness and fruition, coexist. Within the very same, eternally repeated cycle of universal sowing.”
Text by Dr. Niki Loizidou, 2014
