“The Thread of my Memories” — Cypriot contribution to the international project “Textile Cartographies”.
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At the end of this month the global project “Textile Cartographies” will come to Cyprus. Walking seminaries under the supervision and coordination of the Cypriot artist Maria Vassiliadou, Associate Professor at Frederick University, will be held and the international participants will have the opportunity to get familiar with Cypriot nature, culture and especially embroidery tradition in villages like Fyti, Kalopanayiotis or Lefkara.
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The Cypriot contribution runs under the title “The Thread of my Memories” and aims to fill the generational gap produced by displacement in the own country.
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Textile Cartographies is a participatory action research project using textile arts as storytelling, coordinated by APECV Research Group on Arts, Community and Education (GriArCE) with 29 groups from universities, schools, collectives and NGOs in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe.
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The project aims to give voice to minority and peripheral groups in relation to issues such as environment; climate justice; social justice and other sustainability issues through exploring visual discourses using arts and textile technologies.
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The project consists of walking seminaries and workshops in various participating countries to get familiar with local culture, social and environmental issues.
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At the end of October coordinators of the project will travel to Cyprus to participate in the Cypriot contribution to “Textile Cartographies” that intends to open the path of memory and nature.
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The history of people and landscapes is based on memories and Cyprus has a special relation with memories that were interrupted in many cases because of the displacement of population during the sixties and seventies of the last century.
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For many refugees in their own country, textile tradition has been a way to continue memories of lost homelands and histories even if the generational gap has in many cases complicated the continuity of these reminiscences.
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The Cyprus project aims to resume and renew the thread of memories of the lost roots, bringing together different generations—generations who conserve memories of their communities and others that have been cut off and, in the best case, know about them through testimonies of their ancestors.
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Textile work can renew the lost contact caused by the gap that appeared after displacement and the consequential loss of being part of an established community.
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“The Thread of my Memories” has also another symbolic meaning, which is the use of the thread as a continuity, a bridge between the past, the present and the future.
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Coordinator Maria Vassiliadou led embroidery and textile art workshops with her students at Frederick University aiming to give them the opportunity to create their own stories of memories with textile art.
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During the exhibition curated by her, she will organize different workshops with invited groups.
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She will also lead the Walking Seminar in Cyprus between 23rd and 30th of October with international participation which is also part of an Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program.
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During this period different activities will be carried out such as visits to museums, monuments, workshops with local craftswomen, a movement workshop, “embroidery dialogues”, and discussions, nature walks in different places in Cyprus where the participants will get familiar with Cypriot nature, art, culture and embroidery, both traditional and contemporary.
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The culmination of this project will be the presentation of all the artworks from different participant countries in an exhibition which will take place at ARTos House on 30th of October 2024 at 19:00, with the support of the Spanish Embassy in Cyprus and the Aula Cervantes of Nicosia.
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The exhibition will remain open until 6th of November 2024, between 16:00–20:00.
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“The Thread of my Memories” will continue as a textile art laboratory under the coordination of Maria Vassiliadou in collaboration with other groups of artists and craftswomen aiming to give the opportunity of experimental participation to more people and minorities in Cypriot society.