outside the village
among the orange groves
a gap, a parenthesis
hidden in the trees
forbidden
pictures of them descending
advancing through the reeds
roads were made
houses were built
Title: A Matter Of Probability | Digital Print , Nails, Lightbo
lime kilns
fairy tales
strewn across the field
into the pit
a dug out space
under the road
at the exit of the bridge
water gushes out
space, soil
concrete
scattered in the yard
and then they ploughed the fields
down the cliff
into a stream
from west to east
there on the hills
the soil eroded
soil horizons generally consisted of
a decomposing organic top layer,
over a dark grey topsoil,
a transitional soil layer
and a bottom layer
consisting of lighter coloured soils within the regolith.
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“ ..it is both an aesthetic and a political affair when something is allowed to appear as evidence within the forum.”
“Facts are not presented but painstakingly made piece by piece”
Clyde Snow - Forensic Anthropologist
The work seeks to blur the lines between reality and the imagined through the creation of a fictionalized representation of land, which has witnessed a violent past. Suggestive of a haunting narrative that feels both intensely real and metaphorically rich it aims to challenge the viewer’s sense of reality and address the ambiguity of the ontological state of the missing.
The work serves as memorial, engaging with the past, to bring forgotten or suppressed stories to the forefront, thereby creating a space for reflection and remembrance. It also looks into the future alluding to issues of delayed justice, incompleteness, uncertainty, and the subjectivity of experiencing time. Although the case of the missing persons in post conflict Cyprus would be the logical starting point for the Cypriot born artist, the work deliberately avoids the specificity of a historical event, time or place and aims to create a universally relevant narrative, transcending time and space.
It comprises of the layering of a variety of media such as found and personal vernacular photos, negatives, aerial images, topographic maps, engravings, found architectural drawings, AI Generated Images and text, all of which have landscape as a common denominator.
The methodology in creating a fictionalized representation of such a place, was inspired by forensic sciences, the necessity of which arose by the desire for truth, closure, and justice. It is also a subject that has been part of the artist’s daily life through his partner’s profession as a forensic specialist. Over the years this has led not only to the building of personal relationships with key figures in the international forensic community but also to a behind-the-scenes understanding of the nuances of forensic work and its applications across time and space.
These lived experiences and daily exposure to this problematic (in Cyprus and globally) have culminated to this work which is not so much about what you see but rather what you don’t see, like the absence of those who go missing, the way they go missing and the complex work of those who dedicate their careers in finding them and piecing together this contested and elusive truth.
