After almost 30 years, the Cypriot-born painter and graphic design professor returns to (illustrated) prose with the collection of stories “The Strangers.”
In them, she writes about her own strangers, from her mother, grandmother, and aunt to refugees and immigrants. The stories start from a certain truth which is then shaken. Illustrations and texts functioned separately, but they were merged into a single body of work.
What drove you to write about your own “Strangers”?
My childhood was marked by experiences alongside a doubly uprooted woman, my mom, who suffered because she was a stranger. I constantly heard stories that moved me and certainly sensitized me to the issue of foreign women.
So, when the refugee and immigration problem swelled in Greece, due to poverty and wars, I was deeply moved, and starting from my own strangers, the much more difficult lives of “other” foreign women began to take shape within me, and I started writing about them.
I have always been attracted to and moved by autobiographical stories with the sanctity of their confession, foremost among them being the story “My Mother’s Sin” by Vizyinos, which I read in my adolescence.
But here, as the main incentive to write my own “strangers,” was the connection with the theme of my book: foreign refugees and immigrants. However, I must say that another direct incentive was the autobiographical book of the English historian and writer Mark Mazower, “What You Didn’t Say,” with stories close to the stories of my family.
Does the demonization of the “other” concern you in our time?
The demonization of the “other” is a timeless phenomenon, and unfortunately, history is full of genocides and ethnic cleansing.
However, demonization in our time, an era of tremendous technological development and progress that should have brought people closer, not only concerns me but also angers and frightens me.
Misguided goals in education, manipulation and subculture in the media leading to lack of empathy and indifference, political expediencies, and savage economic interests, I believe, are some of the reasons. Racism in “developed” countries is thriving at dangerous rates, and while I am naturally optimistic, I am very worried about the future.
To what extent and under what conditions do you feel like a stranger?
Many times I feel like a stranger even to myself, because as Freud says, “the stranger is not outside, but within us.”
With others, in my countries Cyprus and Greece, I feel like a stranger among people who do not understand my “language” and I do not understand theirs. Among racists, narcissists, nouveau riche show-offs, people pretending to be something they are not, and cultured people who do not know the word “we.”
How do the texts and illustrations converse and interact in this book?
I do not know exactly how they converse and interact with the readers. I hope to find out eventually. What I do know is that I almost always write and draw simultaneously or alternately, aiming to be honest and true in both.
I cannot do otherwise. I illustrate my writings and write on my paintings. They are two languages that want to embrace each other, and when they succeed, I feel good.
With which role do you feel more familiarity: that of the visual artist or the writer?
I cannot answer categorically, as both roles exist within me, and sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other, or they coexist harmoniously. I could not choose one and dedicate myself to it, which might have taken me further.
However, I must say that I draw and paint with greater ease, while words both enchant and torment me. I believe this happens because I studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, worked for many years as a professor of visual language, and my interaction with visual things was constant and significant. However, I think I will always express myself by writing and drawing.
“The Strangers”
Published by Perispomeni
Pages: 240
Price: €18.00
Eleftheria, 18th February 2024
