“Tracing Angel’s Men” is an art and research project that takes as a starting point John Lawrence Angel’s anthropometric photographic archive of 80 plus Episkopi men created in 1949 in Cyprus and now kept at the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States.

The artwork raises a series of critical questions: How can a historically problematic anthropometric archive be re-used, re-framed, decolonised, or expanded so that it gains relevance today? What roles do measurement, photography, and storytelling play in shaping our understanding of people from the past? Which kinds of data are considered valuable, by whom, and why? And finally, what remains absent; what was never photographed or recorded during the making of the original anthropometric archive? Can I speculate on the photographic process using AI technologies?

The work is expected to be completed in October 2026 with an exhibition at Pylon Art & Culture in Limassol, Cyprus https://www.pylon-ac.org/about.html

Credits:

Artist: Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (concept, co-ordination, research, and art production). Curator for exhibition at Pylon Art & Culture: Alessandro Cazzola. Researcher: Thalia Efthymiou (collection of personal stories/photographs and community engagement). Researcher: Helia Zakeri (digitization of original archive)

Special thanks to the descendants of about 60 men who contributed with stories and photographs.

Funding for the exhibition, artwork production, and publication is provided by Pylon Art and Culture. The project was also supported by the Cyprus University of Technology (Cyprus), the Smithsonian Institute (USA), the Department of Antiquities (Cyprus) and the Municipality of Kourion (Cyprus).