Round Trip

In Round Trip […] memory is also an important theme, due to the fact that my quest for the past is, above all, a search for my memories and of my parents. Two years after the opening of the borders in 2004 I accompanied my parents to their first (and last) visit to their occupied village. The trip was filmed and later became part of the Round Trip installation. For many refugees, a visit to the occupied area is no ordinary tourist trip: very often, it becomes an emotionally-invested pilgrimage in which personally experiencing sites of life and death is equated with a greater understanding of both the war and pre-war life. Many journeys are structured so as to structure a story which begins with vibrant life and ends in the obliteration of their houses churches and cemeteries. Witnessing traces of all these things is what gives these trips purpose, and allows participants to fashion their own memory of events, since they have seen the places with their own eyes. Andrea Costantinou writes: “Realizing the risk of inertia involved in a barren video projection, Klitsa Antoniou includes it in a complex and multidimensional work. In the installation Round trip, scenes from the northern part of Cyprus – occupied by Turkish military troops – are projected on a stratigraphy of tiny ceramic ware. The scenes were filmed during the artist’s first and last to her place of origin. Although the glass surface of an overturned table is interposed between the innocent white pottery and the point of projection, artificial light is freely diffused into space. On the point where the projected image meets the “ceramic lace” a positive is created, while on the wall a negative of one and the same mosaic of diverse, yet similar, fractions. Certain historical events divide nations, common History unites people…” (Andrea Costantinou, Klitsa Antoniou: rendezvous with History…, Recent Acquisitions Catalogue, Pierides Foundation, Cyprus)