Art Exhibition with questions of Identity and Homeland

By Heidi Trautmann

Our young artists spread their wings and go conquering new horizons: Nilüfer Inandim, Elena Konstantinou and Hasan Zeybek; they have been invited to do an exhibition in a country that has gone through similar problematic years and their state of mind is the same, says Hasan Zeybek, our young artist friend.

I have been following up the young artists for some years now and had many fruitful talks with them. I have not met Elena yet but have heard a lot about her. Elena is born in Limassol in 1987 and currently lives and works in London. She graduated with honours from the Department of Visual and Applied Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Nilüfer Inandim was born in 1986 in Kyrenia, Hasan Zeybek in the same year in Nicosia, but he grew up in Değirmenlik which has formed him in his artistic thinking. Nilüfer and Hasan went through a lot together, they visited the same art college first in Nicosia, with the teachers Ruzen Atakan and Aşık Mene, you can see that from their way of free thinking and working. The academic education started at the Akdeniz Academy in Antalya and then in Istanbul at the Miramar University.  Both won prizes in art youth competitions. And they all participated in workshops abroad, for example in Bosnia and Herzogovina. A great friendship resulted from their working together and led to the exhibition in Sarajewo now from May 05 to May 09 in the Galerija Preporod; they kept me informed about the opening.

The works exhibited under the title ‘Three Shapes of Aphrodite’, are by young people born under the shadow of the Goddess of Love, the island is famous for, but on two different sides of the island and separated from each other for fifty years.

Elena’s video installation is touching and saddening, even hurting: a young woman opens her body up stitch by stitch and slowly sand trickles down between her fingers until she empties herself completely to the viewer: the birth of….what….the Goddess herself  creating the beaches of the island?  A question of identity or rather emptying herself of all the nonsense picked up by modern life?  It made me feel helpless, I wanted to go and help the young woman in the video.

Nilüfer  has for years been exploring the depths of society, the factitiousness of society, the wrong values society is running after, she is an intensive observer and gives herself completely during the process of painting. Hasan admires her way of working, absolutely free, no rules. Her figures are very strong.

Hasan, as I said before, is influenced by the place he grew up in, the fascinating mesaoria and foothills around Değirmenlik, he has a strong feeling for home, for his Arcadia which became the universal title of his work during university years, his way of thinking with the heavy colours of earth, the symbols of tradition, the symbols of ancient cultures planted in the soil where he walked, the ghosts he met. There is a new work, a video installation, the growth of a tree on a piece of rock, an image of memories of the tree in Limassol, of which his family was talking about in his childhood, where they used to sit; also as a symbol of life, from birth to death.

The three artists have a strong language of art and I am sure they will be understood in Sarajewo, and their works, the three shapes of Aphrodite, or rather as the children of her,  representing the cultural image of Cyprus.