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11:00 AM
Archive Poetics: Working with Artists’ Archives and Estates
Symposium | Within the framework of the ‘Life Like a Horizon’: Nature and Wandering in the Work of Nicos Nicolaides exhibition
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Minerva Hotel, Pano Platres
- Language English
- Price Free admission
Celadon Center for the Arts & Ecologies presents the exhibition and parallel programme ‘Life Like a Horizon’*: Nature and Wandering in the Work of Nicos Nicolaides at the Minerva Hotel curated by Dr. Gabriel Koureas and Dr. Elena Parpa. The Goethe-Institut Cyprus is supporting Celadon Center for the Arts & Ecologies for the materialization of the symposium Archive Poetics: Working with Artists’ Archives and Estates.
The exhibition centers on nature, with a particular emphasis on mountains, in the work of Nicos Nicolaides (1884–1956), featuring drawings and paintings by the artist of the Troodos region and Mount Sinai. The works are drawn from the State Collection of Cypriot Art, the Limassol Municipal Gallery, the Famagusta Temporary Municipal Art Gallery—Agia Napa Municipal Museum as well as from private collections.
Known primarily as a writer, Nicos Nicolaides learned to paint while wandering—initially in the Cypriot countryside as an apprentice iconographer and later in Europe, where he earned a living as a street artist. Following his permanent relocation to Egypt in 1924, his relationship to painting continued to be defined by the experience of peregrination. Living ‘under a tent like a Bedouin’, as described in newspapers of the time, he travelled in order to paint to the Nile Valley, the Sahara Desert and the Sinai. When travelling to Cyprus, he often stayed at Platres, where the region’s landscape, more familiar and less dramatic than that of the Sinai, became a site for studying and observing nature. The exhibition at the Minerva Hotel seeks to highlight the artist’s connection to the region while emphasizing his wanderlust, which he equates in his prose to the longing for ‘a quiet life […] with nature as a companion’.
*Nicos Nicolaides, Oi anthropines kai oi anthines zoes (The lives of humans and flowers) (1938), 39.
The exhibition centers on nature, with a particular emphasis on mountains, in the work of Nicos Nicolaides (1884–1956), featuring drawings and paintings by the artist of the Troodos region and Mount Sinai. The works are drawn from the State Collection of Cypriot Art, the Limassol Municipal Gallery, the Famagusta Temporary Municipal Art Gallery—Agia Napa Municipal Museum as well as from private collections.
Known primarily as a writer, Nicos Nicolaides learned to paint while wandering—initially in the Cypriot countryside as an apprentice iconographer and later in Europe, where he earned a living as a street artist. Following his permanent relocation to Egypt in 1924, his relationship to painting continued to be defined by the experience of peregrination. Living ‘under a tent like a Bedouin’, as described in newspapers of the time, he travelled in order to paint to the Nile Valley, the Sahara Desert and the Sinai. When travelling to Cyprus, he often stayed at Platres, where the region’s landscape, more familiar and less dramatic than that of the Sinai, became a site for studying and observing nature. The exhibition at the Minerva Hotel seeks to highlight the artist’s connection to the region while emphasizing his wanderlust, which he equates in his prose to the longing for ‘a quiet life […] with nature as a companion’.
Symposium
Archive Poetics: Working with Artists’ Archives and Estates
A considerable number of works by Nicos Nicolaides are today considered lost or untraceable, raising significant questions about preserving the tangible and intangible heritage of artists. What remains of an artist’s vision and influence when much of their work is no longer accessible? What research and curatorial approaches can be developed in response? What historical knowledge is produced when based on discontinuity and gaps? These and other questions will be explored in the symposium Archive Poetics: Working with Artists’ Archives and Estates, where researchers, curators, and artists will discuss practices and tools for managing, preserving, and promoting artistic archives and legacies. With the participation of Elena Papadopoulos, Nadia von Maltzahn, Anna Schaffler, Marina Schiza and Valentinos Charalambous, Ioulita Toumazi and AnnaMaria Charalambous.*Nicos Nicolaides, Oi anthropines kai oi anthines zoes (The lives of humans and flowers) (1938), 39.
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Location
Minerva Hotel
36 Spyrou Kyprianou
4820 Pano Platres
Cyprus
36 Spyrou Kyprianou
4820 Pano Platres
Cyprus
