ABOUT

Cultural identity is a focal theme I keep circulating back to, my relationship to nationality consisting of contradictions and schisms. Living my entire life on the island, I came to understand the Cypriot experience of struggle, loss, disintegration and stagnation in time due to outside occupational powers. The irredeemable divide of the island fifty years ago cultivated a culture of fear within which I was brought up, amidst propaganda, militarism and national trauma, in tandem with my city’s rapid gentrification and growing touristic persona. Thus, while alienated on the side-lines of central Europe, my identity cultivated into navigation through shame and grief of my land, and simultaneously preservation and salvation of rich cultural heritage and history.

Sexuality is another component that I tend to delve upon and analyse, as my experiences have been mixed and contradicting, but filled with isolation and internalised homophobia for most of my life. Through this manner, painting becomes a tool to dissect my connection to the queer. In the piece “The mourning of the Hypocrite” [01], I visualised the personal aftermath of coming out, in which I was grieved and mourned as if deceased.

This vagueness of self extends further into the physical state, as through repeating self-portraits I attempt to comprehend my body better. Amidst constant changing of my physique, either through puberty, unhealthy dietary habits or body dysmorphia, painting myself constitutes as the closest act of grasping an image of how I look.

In parallel, I aim to develop work extending itself further than my self-serving purposes, growing its own autonomy to be interpreted and experienced outside of my own needs.