memo | The notion of MEMORY through the visual arts

Department of Design and Multimedia – University of Nicosia.

“Think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.” - Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (1988)

The exhibition presents works produced by students of the Department of Design and Multimedia, University of Nicosia, as well as artworks by students from state and private Cypriot high schools that were developed in the context of the thematic of the competition memo | The notion of MEMORY through the visual arts.*

The thematic of the competition and the exhibition considers the notion of memory and remembrance that is hidden beneath the word memo. The word memo derives from the word memorandum and the verb memoro. In Greek memo means a note, a report, or the process of remembering an important event. Therefore it can be considered to have the form of a note, a document or some other type of communication which assists our memory to record events or observations that are related to a specific theme.

The students were/are asked: to creatively explore and engage with the concepts of memory and remembrance, to consider old and contemporary urban or rural myths or realities, to recall images from past instances of urban life that are no longer a reality, and scenes which have not been recorded or which have been excluded from the grander narratives which we can find in history books. To record stories of a particular social group (e.g. a family), a city or a village and contemporary (hi)stories that they would like to remember in the future.
The memo exhibition is being staged at the offices of the newspaper “Politis”, a building which in the past used to host the important printing firm of the Zavallis Brothers. In this space, amidst the old printing machines, a series of artworks created by young people show us how the past forms the present and how the present shapes tomorrow’s culture...

* This thematic was developed initially for the Pan-cyprian Visual Art Competition for secondary education, Office of the Inspector of Visual Arts, Department of Secondary Education, Ministry of Education and Culture.

Opening | 17/06 @ 20:00
Exhibition Duration | 17/06–23/06

Facebook Event - https://www.facebook.com/memoartcompetition?fref=ts