Savvas Theofanous

My practice involves working with painting, printmaking and collage, and unpacks how images are represented or abstracted depending on their political and cultural context. The images I draw from represent the underlying formal structures of Cyprus’s political and societal traditions. In the process of examining and redefining my Cypriot identity, I came across an extensive vocabulary of familial iconography, which includes family photographs and traditional memorabilia. This archive has since become the visual language of my work, which I overlay, repeat and strip down to its essential elements, in order to both unlearn and relearn the contested histories of this Eastern Mediterranean island and its culture. 

Driven by strategies of layering and repetition, my work explores the question of transparency, and the emotional, material, conceptual and political methods of concealment that we use daily. For this reason, the use of paper underlines my creative practice. The fragility of paper marks the juxtaposition between permanence and impermanence and is used to unveil the frailty of the ideologies that shape us. Its foldability and adaptability make paper a transformative medium that I often marry with other materials that have a central role in Cyprus’s production; copper, gold and silver.

By studying the hidden meanings of Japanese flower arrangements (Ikebana), I draw parallels between the Japanese and Cypriot culture. Both islands have a heavily charged political history, and are committed to the preservation of tradition, craftwork and national mythology. My research on the poetic nature of Japanese aesthetics illuminates Cyprus’s historical background; it aims to expose the hidden narratives of its society and vice versa.

Photo credit: Art Sokoloff