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- Ελληνικά
It is with great honour that I am participating in tonight's event, here in the regenerated old Paper Warehouses of Limassol, for the opening of the group art exhibition "Casts of an Island 2024", organised by the PSI Foundation, curated by Nikos Christoforos Pattichis, one of the most important collectors in Cyprus and the wider Greek world.
Dear Petr, I want to thank you for your biggest and most important investment in Cyprus. We want to encourage more such investments in our country, we are very proud of you. And I want to announce today that we as a Government have decided, if you agree, to use this space for our great cultural event during the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) from Cyprus.
Art is the most important component of every people's individuality and the most effective means by which human societies define their existence. Art is the most basic way of fulfilling man's inherent need to express his ideas, thoughts and reflections and to communicate them to others, building in this process mutual understanding and mutual respect.
With all these facts in mind, we as a State have not invested in our cultural wealth. We were very late and I must mention that it was the private sector that pushed us to move forward to recognize the importance of the cultural wealth of our country, but, albeit slowly, we are moving forward to implement a series of actions and institutional interventions in the nerve center of culture - which we must admit to correct the previous state of affairs that culture was the poor relation in this country.
Among many other things, in the field of cultural heritage we are upgrading our museums and our archaeological sites and monuments, with the aim of making visiting them an attractive experience for everyone. In terms of strengthening contemporary artistic creation, we are introducing specific legislation to recognise and upgrade the status of the artist. We are a country founded in 1960 and in 2024 we have not established the profession of artist. In 2024 we are moving forward with this important development.
Our aim is not only to support and preserve our culture, but also to highlight and harness it as a driving force for social progress, prosperity and economic growth, which we see in the context of fiscal transformation. In other words, investment in culture, among the many other incentives, should also provide tax relief, precisely in order to promote and encourage initiatives such as this one.
Undoubtedly, however, no state cultural policy can bear its full fruits without the existence and assistance of other, independent, institutions and infrastructures. And this is where the role of our compatriots like Nikos and Petr comes in. They have invested in culture, they are showing us the way and we are particularly pleased because the cultural organization "PSI Foundation", although newly established, has managed in a short relative time to establish itself as a nodal cell of the wider ecosystem of visual arts in Cyprus. This is the result of 35 years of work. Dear Nikos, you should be particularly proud of all that you offer us with tonight's unique experience - which I am sure others will have the opportunity to see - which has only one concern, our Cyprus, our reunited Cyprus. It is important to see that this goal, which is our number one priority, is also promoted through art. To realize how close we Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are. For me, this is the most important message that the exhibition sends.
The exhibition is a multifaceted lens through which the social and political reality of the last 50 years in Cyprus is filtered and reconstructed, with the most prominent being the festering wound caused by the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the efforts to heal the wound. The range of ideological categories represented in the exhibition - painting, visual installations and constructions, video works - attests to the vigour and dynamism of contemporary artistic creation, attesting at the same time to its ability to address key questions of life, but also to formulate new, cathartic worldviews.
With these thoughts I would like to warmly congratulate Nikos and Petr. We are here, we approach you as partners, as fellow travellers, competitors in this great effort to finally bring out the cultural wealth of this country.
(PM/AF/MS)
Contents of this article including associated images are owned by PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
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