IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B
Abstract
Public squares have been considered by many as the pillars of social life, reflecting the quality and vivacity of interaction between citizens as well as acting as spaces for the displays of power. Focusing on the city of Nicosia, Cyprus between independence from British colonial rule and the foundation of the Republic of Cyprus (1960), and the present day, the paper will discuss visible changes in and around public squares in relation to auto-ethnographic storytelling. In the last sixty years, Nicosia has undergone major transformations, most visibly in public squares and other spaces within the urban centre which are typically constructed around or anchored by monuments and or cultural heritage sites. Nicosia remains the last divided city in Europe. Although the city is enveloped within the uniformity of the city walls, in Nicosia the past is seen and remembered differently across this divide. The urban development of the city centre reflects these discrepancies and conflicting histories, forming detached visions that cater to different needs, which are many times not aligned with the publics’ behavioural formations and social needs. Rather than concentrating on cultural heritage sites-monuments in and of themselves, the paper will look at the use and function of public squares as constructed places and the stories they have enticed as place-makers. In line with this, narratives produced by artists, writers and cultural historians will be read as a way of (re)claiming or co-authoring these spaces that negotiate their identities. Through this study, a multi-sided and even a multitemporal narrative of public squares will be encouraged to give new perspectives to familiar places that were initially designed to serve certain aims.
Esra Plümer-Bardak is an art historian and researcher-writer. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Nottingham. She is the author of Unica Zurn: Art, Writing and Post-war Surrealism (2016) and Meaningful Coincidences (2022). She has contributed to several journals and edited books internationally, including Contemporary Art in Cyprus (2021) and is the series editor of the EMAA Art Publication Series (2022). Her research focuses on rethinking art history narratives, artistic practices in the Turkish Cypriot Community in Cyprus, and canon formation in conflicting histories.
Antigone Heraclidou is a historian and a Research Associate at the Museum Lab of CYENS Centre of Excellence. She holds a PhD in Modern History from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. She is the author of Imperial Control in Cyprus: Education and PoliticalManipulation in the British Empire (2017). She co-edited several books and has published her work in international journals. She worked closely with several museums in Nicosia from her post as an Officer at Nicosia Tourism Board, while recently she co-curated the exhibition Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line, at the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia.
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Thursday 29th June, 2023