Lea Ebeling

As part of the Xarkis Festival 2022, I spent a two-week artist residency in Agros, a small mountain village in the Greek part of Cyprus, and created a mural in which past, present, and future merge.

What memories does this place bring back to you and what do you hope for the future?

Those are the questions I asked the people of Agros. Together we collected places that brought back memories or inspired imaginations of the future. To do this, they accompanied me on perceptual walks or I conducted interviews with them. The fight against the British Empire, Greek nationalism, the first snow and Nearchos Clerides, the founder of the rose factory who made Agros known for the cultivation and processing of organic damask roses, were just a few elements around which the stories revolved.

The wall for the mural is located on a slope exactly halfway between the rose factory and the church.

I integrated their texture and the line drawn by the crumbled concrete into the composition.

Gradually, I compiled the results of my ethnographic field research into a mural. Accompanied by the collected stories, festival guests were able to embark on a journey through the mural and discover real places as well as unknown elements that are only alive in the residents' memories and imagination.

The finished mural is a gift to the village community and a symbol of joint knowledge production and accessible research results.