Common Ground is a contemporary art exhibition by three Cypriot visual artists: Thekla Papadopoulou, Danae Patsalou and Despina Petridou. The body of work presented is addressing issues and ideas surrounding the Cypriot landscape, where each artist presents the results of a personalised research and exploration around the subject.

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The interpretation of space, place and land acts as the common ground onto which these three artists come together, to present individual and collaborative artworks that pose questions in regards to our relationship with our surroundings, and how this affects our existence and identity. In this context, (land)scape is construed as an experience; a means of memory and recollection, interconnection and exchange of commonalities, always providing a sense of belonging. The contested nature of the island’s land and sea places these natural entities at the core of this artistic interpretation, where each artist brings a piece of their own self, to be connected to the wider image of identity exploration, through the specificities of place.

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‘Despina conceives the landscape as the body of time, of history - a memoir of occurrences, preserved in ways history books fail to capture. Materiality becomes the space where memory is inscribed, and Despina seeks those traces of our personal and collective memories. Growing up in the partly occupied Famagusta, a city that has imposed borders and forbidden territories, the landscapes that are visible to the eye, but unreachable to the touch provoke an existential angst.’

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Ioulita Toumazi

art theorist, curator, writer

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