Who are We, Where do We Come From, Where are We Going to?1 Greek Cypriot Women Artists in Contemporary Cyprus

Abstract

This article is about Greek Cypriot women artists. In particular it concerns their art, their careers, and their relation to politics; the way they were influenced by politics in Cyprus and how they represented the political upheavals of the time in their own practice. Although all these artists experienced the several phases of Cypriot history in a different way, they all have something in common: the fact that these artists were women living in a colonized, patriarchal country under Greek Cypriot nationality. Their practices are the result of what they experienced and an analysis of their work will reveal the artistic strategies they applied as a response to the politics in Cypriot society. To recognize the practice of these artists we need to understand where they come from and the socio-political circumstances from which they emerged. Right up until the first decades of the twentieth century it was rare to hear of a “professional” Greek Cypriot woman and even rarer, a professional woman artist. Even those women who eventually became pioneer artists were not considered to be “serious” artists at the time: as a result until 1990s no studies were undertaken regarding their careers and their practice. One can easily guess the reason for which Greek Cypriot women artists have been marginalized like many other women artists around the world; patriarchal conventions restricted women to the domestic sphere and holding the position of mother, wife, and caretaker of the household.