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“Maculated Memory” – a new essay

Center image of the essay "Maculated Memory" by Dr Niki Katsaouni

Art theorist, Dr Niki Katsaouni, wrote a dissertation on Ripples of Time under the title “Maculated Memory”.  Yorgos commissioned Dr. Nikki to write the essay because she knows his work very well. In 2008, in the capacity of Cultural Counsellor of the Republic of Cyprus to the United Kingdom, she organised an exhibition of the New Icons at the EU’s 12 Star Gallery

Her affinity with the subject matter of ‘Ripples of Time as another reason for the commissioning. Like Yorgos, Dr Katsaouni was a resident of Ammochostos (Famagusta) at the time of the Turkish invasion in 1974. As such she has the profound understanding of the trauma Yorgos went through as a four year old.

In her essay, Dr Katsaouni calls for the founding of a War Museum. That is the place where Ripples of Time will be able to…

“demonstrate how manmade cuts and wounds can be used to restore balance, harmony and hindsight in the world: how not to forget and how to mend.” 

Read “Maculated Memory” online

You can read the essay Maculated Memory, both in Greek and in English, by clicking the button below.

Yorgos About “Ripples of Time”

Famagusta, 14th August 1974. I am four years old and have to spend the night in an orchard during the Turkish bombardments. Even with my mother covering my ears with a pillow, this is the most defining impact on my life, if not the most determinative imaginable. In our flight, my grandmother grabbed the valuables. I was not allowed to take my valuable, my Mickey jigsaw puzzle! The cruelty of both frightening violence and loss, came to be a permanent focus throughout the development of my practice as an artist. 

However, as an inveterate aesthete, I firmly believe that there is beauty in all, even the most harrowing imperfections of life. Being closely related to both time and learning, life offers insight, healing, acceptance and hope, all of which can be expressed in aesthetics.

In “Ripples of Time” I visualised this belief in six panels hung at distances commensurate to dates during my lifetime at which reflections on both the good and the bad were more prevalent than the quotidian. 

As an artist I am an anarchist. I love randomness and chaos. In life I am a-political. To me art is the antidote to politics: no rules, no rulers and only genuine beauty. It’s all that matters.

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