“Time Present And Time Past”
Hand made Scale Model,
Materials: Foam board, strip, paper and plexiglass
70 x 120 cm
2016
Saber Javanmard has thoroughly examined the remains in the buffer zone on the island of Cyprus separating Turkish and Greek areas, where the UN has protected a central region since a violent conflict in the 1970’s. The area is frozen in time, with all its infrastructure still intact from the period. Saber has chosen to reconstruct a scale model of sections of the abandoned airport which in it’s glory days was state of the art. By doing so Saber maps out a society once connected to the world, and now lost in time.
Lauren Alexander / Borderless States / Waag Society / December 2016
For more info -> http://waag.org/en/project/borderless-states
This Project started in September 2016, with an assignment at 3rd year of graphic design at KABK called “Borderless States”. Random GPS Coordinates were handed out. Based on the location, we needed to identify all of the layers of invisible borders which exist in this space excluding nation state boundaries.
Mine was Cyprus. A place I knew from glossy brochures, advertising white beaches, blue water, pittoresque villages and happy people. Soon I discovered this was just one side of the coin.
It seemed that this beautiful island is torn in two: one half belongs to Greek, the other one to Turkey. Political reasons in 1974. As I dug deeper, I found a place that tells this story in it’s own way. Nicosia airport was deserted in 1974 and from that year time took over. It was left in the moment, only functioning as a place capturing dust and somehow very good reminder of T.S Eliot's poem “Four Quartets”.
Nicosia Airport as a metaphor of times goes by. Of times that people were living peacefully next to each other, borrowing each other sugar, marrying each other. The pictures not only depict a gloomy setting, but tell the story of lost peace. The airport soon became my dear friend, and I decided to bring it to life again. The maquette I made shows it’s appearance when it was in it’s full glory. However, for me it was more important to honour Nicosia Airport, where time seems frozen.
The final proposal for this assignment shows the borders between reality and a dream, and let that dream become reality. The dream of renovation, giving life and mobility to a desert, useless, disputed and immobile situation.
