By Heidi Trautmann

 Nilüfer Inandim, Elena Konstantinou and Hasan Zeybek, three young artists from the island of Aphrodite make their manifestations in their joint art exhibition at the beautiful Ismet Güney Art Centre that opened on Friday December 05 with words of welcome by Ümit Inatçı President of the TC Artists & Writers Union. The Union, he said, is supporting young artists who with their own art language prepare the way to unity. The catalogue was published by the Union.

Emre Zeytinoglu, professor at the Fine Arts Department of Minamar University in Istanbul, has written the introduction for the joint exhibition and he dwells on the title with many words of depths that actually lead into a more philosophical direction.

These three young people, born in Cyprus and of the same age group, with a very distinct working philosophy address the viewer with their own interpretations of Cypriot society and its conflicts.

Nilüfer Inandim throws an observing eye on the factitiousness of society, criticizing the behaviour of people beyond the clean surface of society’s morality, the rules of which are constantly broken by them. Misapprehension of ideals of beauty, the cramped conditions that are caused by it with truth and reality shamefully brushed under the carpet. She shows how cramped she feels herself as part of this society, how she feels encaged. There is no escape, the sense of captivity is emphasized by symbols, the closed blinds, the wire mesh, and throughout symbols of bourgeoisie. An overwhelming and grand presentations. A big YES from my side for this manifestation.  

Hasan Zeybek keeps asking himself and the viewer the questions around migration, the enforced migration : where is our Arcadia, can our feet be planted on the same piece of land with our soul rooted at another? We can only reach our own wholeness when we construct our Arcadia on the land where we are, the feeling of longing to be where the soul is will prevent the wholeness. What is home for us humans, how important are belongings, pieces of furniture, items lost, do we not bestow too much importance on them, keep the souvenirs alive within the frame of memory, always present to our unseeing eyes? There is this installation of a house, the centre piece a fire place and bright orange walls pierced by huge nails…. future can be built including the mementoes of the past, they may be part of it. Hasan Zeybek has widened the circumference of his artistic language by excitingly vivid installations, also through a video installation to further manifest his ideas with the shape of a tree engraved on a stone, eventually fading over a period of time. A manifestation to be proud of.

In the third manifestation Elena Konstantinou shows her work, a video installation that 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? Is it the sand of the wall consisting of sacks of sand with small outlooks high up to the other side? Or is it 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.

Elena was not present at the exhibition, she lives in London and only occasionally comes to Cyprus. I hope to meet her one day to see some more of her work and ask her questions.

Under the title ‘Three Shapes of Aphrodite’ the exhibition had been shown in Sarajewo in the Galeria Preporod in May 2014, a country where they have encountered a similar state of mind regarding the problematic past of their country, Hasan Zeybek had told me.

The exhibition can be visited in Nicosia at the Ismet Güney Art Centre until December 12. The venue is next to the Kaimakli Post Office.