‘I dealt with death, bankruptcy and HIV in three months’: Andreas Angelidakis on his radical, Ru Paul-influenced art installation

Spliff in hand, the Greek artist and architect explains how his Venice pavilion was inspired by Picasso’s Guernica, Charlie Kirk’s widow … and a hatred of pavilions

‘Do you mind if I’m smoking while we’re talking?” enquires Andreas Angelidakis as we both recline on a bean bag in the form of a fallen classical column. “Do you mind if it’s narcotics? If it’s cannabis?” He extracts an elegantly constructed spliff wrapped in pink cigarette paper from his black Nike windcheater and lights it up. “It’s my medicine for anxiety,” he says, before reconsidering. “No, I’m just addicted.”

The artist likes to see the world in a slightly altered state – which you can tell as soon as you set foot in the Escape Room, the name of his installation in the Greek pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. The pavilion, which was designed by M Papandreou and inaugurated in 1934, the year that Hitler met Mussolini here, has been furnished with a light-up dancefloor, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax is pumping from the sound system and wilted classical columns hang from the ceiling or are arranged as seating on the floor.
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