In essence, there is no valid barometer that can be used to define any limit to freedom of expression. Think about it: is there really such a thing as a moral imagination?
Pain is common. War and post war situations are common and this somehow unites people. I believe art is the best way to find what is common and human; a way in which you can find a humanistic approach without any political identities such as nationalism, or without any religious identities, without any identity that is capable of separating people.
And then there was this feeling of liberty; that yes, working across the divide is nowadays a reality anyone can choose to embrace.
Jean Plantureux’s invitation to present an exhibition of his work in the capital a week after the brutal attacks on Charlie Hebdo’s Satirical Magazine consequently defended freedom of expression of artists but also highlighted the ‘colossal educational battle’ that is now imperative in order to better understand image and withstand the ‘beginning of a war against fundamentalists’.
Can other people’s memories become our own?
The education of any further generation without art in their curriculum is somewhat reducing a whole educational, philosophical, practice, and encouraging an inward looking approach to a European world which is traditionallly differentiated, country by country, by its cultural and artistic differences.
I’ve gotten used to the Chinese signs in Paphos advertising real estate opportunities — but that’s business related. Why would the suburbs of Akaki welcome people in Russian? Was it another trick to entice foreign interest?
On Sundays, he would secretly leave the back door open, and for those of us who were aware of this, we would leisurely have fresh produce when everything else around us was closed. I’ve lost count of how many times he saved me from missing that one item to perfect my culinary whims.
Beyond their sense of warmth, I contemplated their freedom of being, that ‘opposition’ to hanging out in the centre of town on the cold marble of Phaneromeni Square.
Meeting Maria Stathi on the occasion of the opening of her new gallery next Friday, there’s no doubt that her path has deemed it the right time to launch a new approach to Nicosia’s art scene
The EU funded bi-communal “Nicosia Master Plan” has taken leaps revamping the commercial hub of the town once threatened by the first inter-communal riots in 1956. Yet the vision of the newly founded CVAR museum is perhaps the additional drive needed to lift the character of a street which began to see its shops, peoples and stories trapped in the buffer zone since 1963.
Sitting amongst the works of art of 15 long term inmates which adorned the walls of the theatre hall of the closed off section of the central prisons I, for a split second, forgot where I was.