Animated Cypriot Clay, an art project to reflect the basic form of creation, history and immortality, timelessness; the past in the presence, the realities in today and yesterday. Our doings today are irrevocably connected to yesterday. A person is never forgotten.
Emin Cizenel told us the background story of the present exhibition at the opening evening at Sidestreets, to many friends and art lovers, to the father and sister of late Rüya Reşat.
"Argilla Animata Cypria" was conceptualized as a joint art project by Anber Onar and myself in 2007. The works were exhibited in Paris and Thessaloniki, and as part of a joint exhibition in Germany in which we and the late Rüya Reşat participated.
In its Paris phase in 2008, the project integrated Parisian public squares and spaces and was exhibited in Paris at the Nikki Diane Marquardt Gallery.
Newly configured works in the series are now being shown here at Sidestreets, in an exhibition dedicated to Rüya Reşat, with whom we worked closely during the time when the project was first exhibited.”
The project’s philosophy is documented on the wall:
“Down through the centuries they bore witness to the island’s history. Their lives were lived in the unity of a large family. Each protected the outer cover of its own loftily baked form. They were nourished with fire and light. No one heard their whispering songs. They came face to face with unspeakable things as they sought their identities on mountain heights, and in the depths of the seas. They were unable to scream. The brightness of their pleasure shone through as they stripped away the intense heat of the fire’s core. Light became their expression. They confused being stroked with being loved. Their lovemaking did not reflect their sexual preferences. Their faith was always determined for them by others. They spoke of every colonial power that came onto the stage as “history”. They moved and circulated without passports or visas. But now they are in a space where they want to be, and they are disoriented. They alone can travel with validity through the passage of time. They are always reconfigured anew, and become more provocative as they are moved to different spaces of observation and constantly rethought in the form of new concepts. To belong to a particular time is for them only an infinite extension. Their existence is in a space of observation and their concept a gift that is endlessly recalled anew.”
Anber Onar and Emin Cizenel have ‘animated Cypriot clay’ and formed small objects very much like protozoon or corpuscles, have fired them, and, to give them recognition and a presence they have designed a new life for them in photos of some public places of Paris. There are some new editions to the exhibition, some new works in sort of public and historic places in Cyprus. The photo composition gives a clear image of position; there is a here and there, two realities, inside and outside.
A very intriguing aspect of our existence on this globe. In future I will certainly train my inner eye to discover the various levels of our identities, we are not an accidental apparition but have an absolute right of existence.
The exhibition is open to the public until April 14 ending at 4 pm.