ADMA 2023-2024

In my research, I explore the social space of Cypriot kafenes (coffeehouse, Greek Cypriot: καφενές) as a meeting place in a community. Different forms and kinds of kafenia (plural) can be found in many places in the Mediterranean and Balkan region, with the origins to be in the Ottoman Empire. Kafenes is, physically and metaphorically, situated at the centre of a community. It is at the core of the community’s social life and contributes to community building in villages and urban neighbourhoods. As a visual artist and researcher, I work with the concept of kafenes in Cyprus focusing on my experiences and memories of the place. In my homeplace, kafenes is in the middle of the square and very close to my home. Hence, my research involves an exploration of the interrelations between distances and proximities. Cypriot or Turkish coffee, as it is known, is considered the ‘traditional’ coffee of many areas in the region, and it has its own socio-political and historical significance in each place. In this project, I approach coffee drinking as a shared social activity and coffee, not only as a consuming product, but as an excuse for social interaction.

This bitter taste on the tongue consists of three installations each related to a narrative around community, nature, belonging, traditions, time, memory, ageing, and change. The installations function as meeting spaces grounded on the idea of sharing living time with others. The spaces can be experienced in multiple ways, individually or collectively, by involving conversations but also ‘silent’ moments. I use ceramics, writing, performative oral story-sharing, and coffee drinking to create multi-level sensory experiences based on spatial and temporal transition. My intention is to engage with the concept of social participation as an active complex process of bodily experience and ‘aesthesis’ that is not merely manifested by human relations but also by the involvement of other beings. I employ the example of kafenes as a conceptual space of unmediated informal exchanges to articulate and enable other modes of being together, (re)gathering, relating, remembering, and experiencing. By emphasizing on pluriversity, collectiveness and social participation, I want to contribute on the imagination of other multiple alternative networks of exchange and communication.