Had singing birds on me
Mehmet Yashin, Panayiotis Michael, Evagoras Vanezis
21.09—19.10. 2024










The collaborative project “Had Singing Birds on Me”, by Mehmet Yashin, Panayiotis Michael, and Evagoras Vanezis, is now on display at the gallery. Through ten gestures closely related to Yashin’s archive, the project embodies a spirit of diverse affiliations and multiple belongings. These gestures mirror Yashin’s literary and poetic approach, which, while deeply personal, transcends individual identities and draws on the Levantine tradition he remembers from his grandmother, who mingled Turkish and Greek alphabets, languages and cultures in everyday life.
The project is part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the publication of Yashin’s first poem. One of the most internationally acclaimed poets of Cyprus, he has been at the vanguard of multilingual literature since his landmark critical study of Cypriot, Greek and Turkish literature, “Step-Mothertongue” (Middlesex University Press, 2000). His poetry and novels have been translated into more than twenty languages; the first selection of his poetry, “Don’t Go Back to Kyrenia”, was chosen for translation by the British Centre for Literary Translation.