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A WISH-full Place

A WISH-full Place is a spatial installation in the abandoned shopping centre City Plaza, located in the once thriving commercial centre of Nicosia. In the 90s’ the City Plaza was once the biggest department store in Cyprus, the first one of its kind and the place to be.

It has been in operation since 1989  where it was slowly left isolated resulting from the financial economic crisis in the island. 

Pop-up Festival has been organising events to respond to the urban degradation of the city centre since 2013. Pop-up Festival is organised by the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC) and funded by the Municipality of Nicosia.

Through open calls, Pop-up Nicosia  generates temporal spaces to ‘pop up’ for a short period of time in the underused spaces of the city centre and within the City Plaza. The event aims to highlight the work of young creatives and entrepreneurs and showcase creative goods, cultural event and serve delicious food. 

A WISH-full Place invokes the dereliction of this legendary building by the very source that created it, bringing forward a critique of the acquisitive society that it generated it. It calls for the awareness that the aggravation of our environment, both living and natural, is caused by the existing socioeconomic system. The installation aims to initiate a more wishful thinking about current issues where our own system fails us, and leave some positive, wishful notes and thoughts for the future, a future of caring for the ‘other’, the environment and ourselves.

Urban Gorillas Design Team:

Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Veronika Antoniou, Sara Boraei, Mary Giannaka, Nicos Sokorellis, Anastasis Balabanides, Kyriaki Christofidou, Elli Balabanidou, Agni Gregoriou, Morgan Simpson

Activities

A WISH-full Place is a spatial  installation that aims to attract the attention of the passerbys and draw them in the abandoned building where they can experience various activities of the Pop-up Festival. It is an installation made with 600 meters of fabric that has been meticulously hung from the balconies of the atrium.

The installation engages the public through a playful interaction activity: it asks visitors to write and ‘throw their wishes on the hanging fabrics. 

Through planned workshops the visitors can create origami-like folded planes and myriad planes where they can write their wishes to fly and direct them in the airy installation. During the 5-week residency of the installation a handful of wishes would be collected which would later be exhibited in collaboration with Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre.

Design Team:  Sara Boraei, Mary Giannaka, Nicos Sokorellis,Anastasis Balabanides, Kyriaki Christofidou, Elli Balabanidou, Agni Gregoriou,Morgan Simpson, Veronika Antoniou ,Yiorgos Hadjiichristou

 

Objectives

The activities taking place in “A WISH-full Place” will contribute to the following project objectives:

– To develop and apply creative placemaking practices: the installation is meant to revive memories of the space and create new meaningful connections and associations with the abandoned building.

Other files:

Links

https://nimac.org.cy/open-call-nicosia-pop-up-festival-2021/

Contact

Veronika Antoniou

urbangorillas.ngo@gmail.com

Teresa Tourvas  

ttourvas@icloud.com

Participants

Pop Up Nicosia 2021 

Municipality of Nicosia