How do you handle the objects that surround the lives of departing individuals? It’s a question most of us are called upon to answer at some point in our lives.
Even more so when these objects have been packed away in boxes for years, as if ready for departure from occupied land.
The parents of Toula Liasi, after the 1974 invasion, refused to leave their home in Agia Triada.
They stayed there until their death, but as their daughter testifies, living constantly with fear and uncertainty, they made sure they were ready to leave if necessary.
They ensured that all the objects were ready in wooden boxes so they could easily transport and rescue them. Objects not only of monetary or emotional value, but also all sorts of things they did not want to part with.
Items from the 1930s when the house was built.
Handwoven textiles, hand towels, lace doilies, tea boxes, biscuit tins, and other products no longer available in the market, wedding crowns, rusted barrels, enamel plates and cups, night pots, glasses with company logos, agricultural tools, oil storage containers, knives with wooden and plastic handles, handkerchiefs, charms, and a host of other items reminiscent of another era. Where time stopped, in ’74.
Five years after her father’s death, ten after her mother’s, and after the funeral of her missing brother’s bones, Toula Liasi took these objects and transformed them into art. “Synchronizing Art” is the title of the exhibition at the Municipal Arts Center in Larnaca.
Through these objects (an incredible collection), one can see the Lives of the Absent.
Through these textiles, one can recognize the toil and talent of her mother, through the cotton and silk dresses dancing with the wind recorded on the ceiling of the house in Agia Triada, one can imagine her mother moving, amidst the cracks and the rust of the enamel plates, one can think of people who shared their meals but also a meal that was interrupted, a broken tool, handmade wooden chairs, holey sieves staging a pattern of a life, an era, a place…
And all these keys? Keys to houses that perhaps their owners entrusted to Savvas Liasi to guard until their return.
All given with a smart simplicity. Without unnecessary theories around each one, without imposed emotions. Emotion arises naturally according to each one’s experiences and perceptions. (Until July 31st).
