Melita Couta: Living in Miniatures and other Glocal Tales

Melita Couta

Living in Miniatures and other Glocal Tales: Performance and Space Design in between walls and borders.

Venue. The Rose

Abstract

How can we understand places of conflict and trauma through their materiality as a carrier of memories? How can we connect with them through scenographic methodologies and ultimately envision their possible futures?

Reflecting on these questions, artist Melita Couta will be presenting her artistic research, design, and making process for the installation “Spectators in a Ghost City”, the exhibition of the Cyprus National participation in the Exhibition of Countries and Regions, which won the Golden Triga Award in this year’s Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2023. The artwork was centred on a series of sculptural maquettes, the representation of abandoned buildings from the ghost city of Famagusta on the eastern coastline of Cyprus.

The creation of models as autonomous objects and the symbolic reduction of scale of contested spaces to miniatures, links to Lévi-Strauss theory of the scaled-down object as harmless and comprehended at once and as a whole. Melita Couta will be discussing her process of developing the artistic concept, designing and constructing the art installation, as well as performing a walking journey while carrying a model building of Famagusta as luggage on her back.

In a second part, Couta will talk about her concept of “reversed scenography” through further examples of her works, spanning from installation art, socially engaged projects, theatre and performance art. How can we experience real places as scenographic spaces and how can we learn and create alternative narratives to the pre-existing ones? She proposes the use of scenographic methodologies as thinking processes, a political act, negotiating real spaces of conflict, awkward histories and artistic practices.

Finally, the presentation will explain how this approach unsettles the role of the artist and the viewer as it will address issues of appropriation, spectacle, voyeurism and the role of art itself in the face of human trauma that expands beyond the (glocal) history of Famagusta in Cyprus and echoes other ghost spaces in the world.

Melita Couta

Melita Couta is a multidisciplinary artist born in Cyprus. She studied at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design and at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has been working with sculpture, ceramics, installation art, performance as well as using collaborative and participatory methodologies in order to investigate subjects related with narratives through personal and collective identities and memories. As a curator and Artistic Director she has worked with local communities on Cultural projects, Festivals and Workshops in order to revisit local histories and making processes.

She has been exhibiting her work widely in Cyprus and abroad in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

Melita Couta has been working extensively in theatre and performing arts as a director, performance designer and producer. In June 2023, she was commissioned by the Cyprus Theatre Organisation to design the art installation for the Cyprus National participation in the 15th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. The exhibition was awarded the Golden Triga award.

She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the Fine Art Department of The Nicosia University.

www.melitacouta.com

www.paravan.org

For group bookings and enquiries: lewis.bayley@bruford.ac.uk