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Contemporary Art from Cyprus Politics, Identities, and Cultures across Borders

Co-Edited by Gabriel Koureas

Contemporary Art from Cyprus Politics, Identities, and Cultures across Borders

To what extent does locality influence contemporary art? Can any particular artistic practices be defined as uniquely Cypriot? And does art from Cyprus transcend Western boundaries once it enters the global art scene?

This volume uses Cyprus as a case study for the exploration of notions of identity, regionalism, and the global and local in contemporary art practice; it is not, therefore. a complete historiography of contemporary Cypriot art. Rather, this critical text provides a theoretical and historic-al framework that frames and contex-tualizes art practices from Cyprus, while always relating these back to the international art world.

Numerous current and pressing issues—all relevant beyond Cyprus—are investigated in this book including, but not limited to, art as capital. the emergence of the "periphery', the importance of thriving localities, issues of memory and memorialization, archaeology, artists' identities, conflict and politics. social engagement, gender politics, and such curatorial alternatives as artist-run spaces. In doing all of this. Contemporary Art from Cyprus not only bears on current and future art practices in this region but highlights the importance of Cypriot art in a global context too.

■ bloomsbury.com

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.

Edited by Klitsa Antoniou

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.

The exhibition, in the space of the historic Forest Park Hotel within the community of Platres, takes the form of artistic interventions by the teaching staff of the department of Fine Arts, Cyprus University of Technology. Organized by the head of the department, Professor Klitsa Antoniou, this artistic event endevours to combine the prolific creativity of the featured visual artists with the rich history of the hotel.

The aim of the exhibition is to encapsulate the colonial and postcolonial past of the hotel and by extension that of its distinguished guests and of the island of Cyprus. The fulcrum of the visual intervention is the fact that British author and foremost representative of Gothic fiction, Daphne Du Maurier, not only was a guest at the hotel but there are testimonies to confirm that she also wrote part of her novel Rebecca (1938) there. Besides, scattered among the novel are oblique references to Forest Park Hotel and the Cypriot landscape.

The exhibition addresses some of the main themes of du Maurier's book, such as the contrast between obsessive love and hate, memory and nostalgia of bygone times, the social position of women as well as the historical context within which the novel was completed, namely Cyprus.

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