The rich legacy of Venetian textiles and their enduring influence on Cypriot society and what it has historically worn is at the centre of an ongoing Nicosia exhibition aiming at transforming historical knowledge into a language that’s digestible and understandable. The links between the two are even reflected in the exhibition’s name: Stoffe. Stoffa means textile in Italian (stoffe is plural) but in Cypriot, the word stoffa means good quality textile.
“It’s not just a word that was borrowed in Cypriot, the word is charged with qualities of the Venetian textiles. I want people to see the textiles and imagine that in Cyprus, there were people wearing clothes made out of these textiles,” says Curator Dr Iosif Hadjikyriakos. “We live in a society where the aspect of things is more important than the qualities of things.
Reality, which is subjective, is based on the surface, on appearance, and not in the substance, not in the soul of the things and this exhibition is also an answer to this,” he adds. Based on the theory that an exhibition is an immersive activity, Stoffe is designed as an exploratory experience rather than an explanatory one, there are very few words. “The exhibition is composed of two elements: enlarged photos of details from icons and frescoes of various periods depicting Cypriots wearing textiles from Venice.
And in the middle of the room, there’s a certain number of actual antique textiles from the 15th to the late 18th century,” explains .
