Sep 15 – Nov 18 2022 / Private View Sep 15, 6 – 9 pm
From 16 Sep the exhibition will open by appointment
(for address or to visit contact [email protected])
Thousand Julys is a new space for contemporary art in Nicosia. Housed in a former coffeeshop and current residence, it is a space to present, discuss and build around current happenings in contemporary art.
Thousand Julys launches its programme on 15 September 2022 with a solo exhibition by Marietta Mavrokordatou.
In this new body of work, Mavrokordatou’s material are the people closest to her and the city she grew up in, documented while going for a walk.
Within these walks, familiar subjects (friends, family) and familiar backdrops (the city) build a fictional narrative. A story that never existed is materialised and documented. Friends become subjects, role models, fashion models, commercialised, adored, perceived, depicted. Public spaces become temporary structures to the new narrative.
In the process of building the narrative, a vocabulary consisting of experiential or personal associations is gathered, and then used for the purpose of being ignored, escaped, re-written. A fictional reality created out of the need to escape a supposed condition; the unbearable heat, the burden of predictability, the generational anxiety. Unavoidably, the new reality is born out of the very things its trying to escape, becoming a shinier, sexier, more poetic version of itself. The artist’s material is what surrounds her, what touches her on a daily basis- you can’t become without existing.
This body of work introduces a new framework for Mavrokordatou’s practice. Consisting of 24 individual photographs and one collage, it was taken on a single walk in late July.
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Marietta Mavrokordatou (b. 1996, Nicosia, Cyprus) is a visual artist based between London and Nicosia. Mavrokordatou is currently studying at The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, obtaining her MFA in Fine Art Media. She received her BA in Fine Art Photography from Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK in 2019. Her first solo exhibition, Rotten Sun, took place at TESTDRIVE, DriveDrive, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019).
Selected group exhibitions include Social Sculptures BEUYS100, Goethe Institut Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); Seeking Roots, curated by Ioulita Toumazi, NiMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); …vida digna de ser vivida, curated by Peter Eramian, Phytorio Association, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019); Weltanschauung, Copeland Gallery, London, UK (2018).