Duygu Demir Another Kind of Muralnoma Bedri Rahmi
DuyguNicosia, Cyprus, 2010: The Fragment Demir In early 2010, as he waited for a meeting with the ambassador of the Republic of Turkey in Nicosia in Northern Cyprus,1 Johann Pillai, a comparative literature professor and founding director of the local art space Sidestreets, sat facing four mosaic panels leaning on the wall, which he would later discover, were in fact placed upside down. (Figure 1) AnotherThe caption next to the mosaics attributed the panelsKind to the late Bedri of Muralnomad: Rahmi Eyüboğlu (1911-1975), an artist from Turkey known not only for his instantly recognizable appropriation of Anatolian motifs, but also for his poetry. The label included information about how the panels had come to be on the island: there had been an exhibition of Bedri Rahmi’s Bedriworks in Nicosia in 1962, andRahmi these panels were only a section of a larger Eyüboğlu’s gift to the Cyprus Turkish Armed Forces Command (KTAK) after the event, with the rest installed in an officers’ mess at the military barracks. It was also mentioned that according to various sources there were two hundred of the 50cm wide and 200cm high panels, but that KTAK didn’t Mosaichave exact information about the artwork Wall as a whole.2 from the Turkish Made of a seemingly infinite number of triangular and square-shaped 120 tesserae set in concrete, the panels featured white diagonals and spots of red, brown, and turquoise floating against a swerving deep lapis lazuli background. At first glance, it seemed like an abstract geometric com- Pavilionposition.3 During his meeting, the newly appointed at ambassador the asked Brussels Pillai whether he would be interested in exhibiting these mosaic panels at Sidestreets.
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