Where do you live?
I live in Nicosia with my family.

What did you have for breakfast?
Nothing, I only had a black coffee.

Describe your perfect day
I can’t really describe the perfect day, I don’t know what it looks like. Besides, it’s something I stopped searching for. Instead, for some time now, I’ve started searching for the reason why each of my days could be considered “perfect.”

Best book ever read?
I think it’s Labyrinths by Borges. Every story in that book corresponds to a cog in the mechanism of how I think. As a whole, the book is like a surface upon which the profile of my soul is reflected with remarkable clarity.

Best childhood memory?
None.

What is always in your fridge?
Wine.

What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
Usually, in the car, I listen to radio plays and audiobooks. Mostly classics, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Tennessee Williams, Miller, Pirandello, Kazantzakis, Tagore. I have an archive of over 200 plays and audiobooks, which I keep enriching. I’ve just finished listening to the Book of Revelation and I’m deeply impressed. I’ll listen to it again because some of the images still escape me.

What’s your spirit animal?
My spirit animal defines the air and horizons, uniting earth with sky. The myth of Ganymede and his ability to move between worlds has always fascinated me. I have always considered birds to be messengers. I believe they are the only beings with whom I am in constant dialogue.

What are you most proud of?
I’m very proud of the fact that I am who I am, and the few things I’ve done so far in life I owe only to myself and to the people who believed in me with honesty and selflessness. In my attempt to exist I did many mediocre things, always fully aware of it, but I never surrendered to spiritual mediocrity.

What movie scene has really stayed with you?
I’m not really into cinema, to be honest. I rarely watch movies. I don’t know actors, titles, names, nothing. My artistic perception is incompatible with this art form. Nevertheless, Glauce running ablaze outside the walls in Pasolini’s Medea, the scene behind the bookshelf in Interstellar, or the red baroque of Greenaway’s static frames are images that have stayed with me.

If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
Giotto. The very idea that the Renaissance, and the history of modern Western painting, began with a shepherd fascinates me. I would love to hear him tell countless stories: about his relationship with Cimabue, the tales the Franciscan monks shared with him while he painted, the jokes he exchanged with Dante in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, how he invented the blue of the sky, and how, without even realising it, he rediscovered observation.

If you could time travel, when/where would you go?
Without a doubt, I would go back to the late Middle Ages. I would like to be one of the Carmelite monks returning from Jerusalem to central Italy in the mid-13th century, passing first through Cyprus. Occultism, meditation and prayer in a strictly worldly Papal Italy, yet also poverty and humility in a world that was just beginning to discover wealth and consumerism.

What is your greatest fear?
Fear itself!

What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
Be patient.

Name the one thing that would stop you dating someone.
If they had a very limited vocabulary when talking.

If the world is ending in 24 hours, what would you do?
I would climb somewhere high to have a panoramic view of the end.

The Biennale continues in and around Larnaca until November 28, where visitors can expect to observe more than 117 creations presented by artists from around the globe