Yiorgos Tsangaris
area: Experimental Animation, Graphic Arts
Key Facts
nationality
Cyprusarea
Experimental Animation, Graphic Artsresidence
Nicosiarecommending institution
ASIFA Austriatime period
May 2023 - May 2023Graphic artist, experimental animation filmmaker and the founder and artistic director of Countryside Animafest Cyprus, the official international animation film festival of Cyprus and the first of its kind in the country. Founded in 2002, the festival contributed significantly to the appreciation of the idea of decentralising the arts and has revitalised small rural communities, creating an interest in independent animation cinema in Cyprus among a very wide audience spectrum.
Yiorgos Tsangaris is the director of the Hambis Municipal Printmaking Museum in Nicosia and curator and organiser of many educational programs, workshops, exhibition projects and programs on artistic animation film and printmaking. He has served as guest curator and member of the jury of several international festivals. His artistic work, film and posters have been presented and received awards in many international exhibitions and film festivals around the world.
Short film: The Weaver
Experimental Animation / work in progress
Weaving has traditionally and diachronically been a way of ‘writing’ and ‘story-telling’ for women, who through their textiles give their own, frequently subversive, alternative and anti-establishment, version of events. Examples from ancient myth of such women using weaving in such a subversive way, include, among others, Penelope, Helen, Philomela and Arachne.
During my time of the residency in MQ, I will be ‘rehearsing’ the ‘visual vocabulary’ of my new film, experimenting mainly with the technique of scratching and painting directly on film, as a metaphor for the traditional weaving process. This work in progress, draws inspiration from Cypriot folk art, especially in the way it uses textiles as a central function for recording the atmosphere of a civilisation that is disappearing.