CYPRUS HOUSE, 13 St. James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LB
THE GREEN LINE IN LONDON’S GREEN LANES
The Cyprus High Commission in the UK in partnership with the Hellenic Institute, the Centre for Greek Diaspora Studies, and the Centre for the GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum – University of Cambridge, present the exhibition Creating Diasporic Worlds at the Cyprus House, from July 5th - 19th 2022.
Launching on July 5th, the Cyprus High Commission will host an opening evening, with free tickets available here. The exhibition will remain until 19 July, open for visitors during the hours of 10am and 4pm from Monday to Friday through RSVP by emailing info@culturalchc.co.uk
THE GREEN LINE IN LONDON’S GREEN LANES, a short film exploring North London’s Cypriot community created by Olivia Melkonian and Anoushka Berberian, executively produced by Tatevik Ayvazyan and Rebecca Jinks, will premiere exclusively at the exhibition. Through oral histories, soundscapes and VHS footage of Cyprus before and after the divide, the film explores how the Green Line is reflected in London’s diverse, intergenerational Cypriot communities.
Research into intergenerational memory, its refraction through successive traumatic events, and diasporic memory helped us to tease out how (and which) narratives about spatial division, ethnic division, and dislocation are passed through generations, and how the experience of living in or being born into a diaspora can impact nostalgia, memory, and attitudes across generations.
“We lived in the Old City, and we had a lot of Turkish and Armenian neighbours. All along the street, you would hear Armenian and Turkish; everybody socialised and looked after each other's children. We ran around and played.”
Today, areas such as Wood Green, Turnpike Lane, Enfield and Green Lanes hold much of the Cypriot diaspora - a place where in some ways the communities return to communal living. Community centres, supermarkets, restaurants and bakeries resemble an earlier Cyprus; Turkish and Greek spoken in Cypriot dialects peppers the streets, with shared delicacies from both communities available to buy and share.
“The Green Line in Cyprus divides the island, but the Green Lanes in Haringey join these communities instead of dividing them.”
Our interviews with three generations of Armenian-Cypriot, Greek-Cypriot, and Turkish-Cypriot individuals now living in London explore memories and understandings of Cyprus before and after its spatial division, successive displacements and migrations, and the maintenance of diasporic connections. Ultimately, the film suggests that in London’s Green Lanes, away from the spatial demarcation of the Green Line, ethnicity can matter less than shared, but perhaps unrecognised, connections.