“Tracing Stass” is a tribute to the iconic and internationally recognised Cypriot artist and educator Stass Paraskos, who was born in Anaphotia, west of Larnaca. ‘Stass Paraskos is considered the most significant Cypriot artist of his generation’ (The Guardian 2014).

The performance serves as the official parallel event of the Larnaca Biennale 2025. It includes a performative walk led by the artists through Stass’ childhood surroundings and the landscapes that inspired his work. The artists, Koutsoftides and Pruciak, will broadcast this walk live from Anaphotia and simultaneously project it in the Larnaca City Centre, allowing the audience to experience it in real-time. This performance reconnects the past with the present, exploring layers of home and memory while enabling people to connect through Stass’s work. The proposing artists will trace Stass’ steps in the village of Anaphotia, and through the broadcast, they will guide viewers on a journey through time and space. Viewers of the broadcast will have a unique opportunity to explore the juxtaposition of Stass’ topography and the memories preserved on the canvases of his landscape paintings, which will be strategically placed along the proposed walking route by the artist. Each encounter will be accompanied by reflections on the work in situ from those who have interacted closely with him, through a pre-recorded audio memoir played on location and broadcast live in Larnaca. The selected individuals include 1 childhood friends, family members, colleagues, art professionals, educators, and researchers. The walk concludes when Koutsoftides and Pruciak encounter a video installation on site, featuring a short video interview with Stass, which is played and broadcast to the audience in Larnaca. This performance also allows Stass, both metaphorically and symbolically, to revisit his home village, bringing him back to the people of Anaphotia with this gesture. Through this broadcast performance, the artists create an allegorical window in a city that connects to the windows in Stass’s memory through his paintings and to a metaphorical window in the village of Anaphotia. All these windows intertwine through layers of time, space, and memory, threading discoveries with the audience’s participation. The village of Anaphotia thus reminisces about Stass and Larnaca, tracing his creation of a live dialogue with the audience, transcending time and space.

more: https://tracingstass.com/