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This is a body of work which involved the physical and cultural underpinnings of the time and place they were made.  For 1 month I conducted fieldwork in Cunda Island, which is near Ayvalik in Turkey.  The island is inhabited by people with both a Turkish and Greek heritage.  Ultimately, I explored the cultural amalgam of the two traditions and I referenced a contemporary perception of inclusion, rather than fragmentation.  Despite the precarious political/ historical rivalry of the 2 countries, in Cunda Island Turks and Greeks, Orthodoxs and Muslims, coexist happily and harmoniously.  Before attempting to realise the new body of work, I planned interventions in the form of public performances, for the purpose of engaging with the local culture, communities and understanding of the people. 

 

The outcome of the research was the artworks:  ‘2 x (turkey + greece)' (the paintings on the wall) and ‘delicate, fragile, concrete’ (the sculpture on the floor).  For the paintings ‘2 x (turkey + greece)' I used coffee on cardboards which were found on the street. Each painting represents a country, yet the same method and materials were used for highlighting their cultural similarity. In ‘delicate, fragile, concrete’  the action of placing a traditional coffee cup on top of a traditional chair that finally lost its balance and broke was symbolic. It casts the difficulty to find the balancing point among delicacy and concreteness that in turn casts how difficult it is to find the balancing point among fragmentation and inclusion.

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I attempted to use a constructionist approach, rather than accepting the meaning of inherited concepts. I undertook a dialectic method with cross-references. To portray the cultural layers within the island, the qualities of delicacy and concreteness were adopted, as for their formal and conceptual capacity.

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Greek/ Turkish coffee is used-consumed in both countries.  Also, they both boil the coffee in a briki and both foresee the future in the stains of the coffee in the cup. In Greece, it used to be called Turkish coffee, but the name changed due to the political tension.  I believe that Greek/ Turkish coffee can trace the history of the political relationship of the 2 countries, and yet how similar the 2 people are, despite politics and the particular historical rivalry.

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