Peter Eramian
Il faut cultiver notre jardin
In 2016 a large metal object thought to be from a rocket fell from the sky onto a jade mine in Myanmar.
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Truman begins his quest as a stage light mysteriously falls from the sky outside his house. The stage light is labelled Sirius, from the brightest star, often used for guidance by travellers.
The Truman Show (1998) dir. Peter Weir, USA.
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“Down to earth...Like your famous airplanes.”
Arundhati Roy (1997 [2017]) The God of Small Things, 4th Estate. (On the autoimmune character of 9/11 see: Giovanna Borradori (2003) Philosophy in a Time of Terror, University of Chicago Press)..)
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“Please note that that is, in fact, the colour of our bodies: greyish brown, ugly...It’s the colour of insides...where matter hides in moisture from others’ gazes…”
Olga Tokarczuk (2007 [2018]) Flights, Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Photo: Peter Eramian
The proverb “down to earth” means “someone or something that is free of pretension and doesn't put on airs...simple and straight-forward.”
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“I love it just because it is a stone...But I will say no more...Words do not express thoughts very well.”
Hermann Hesse (1922 [1998]) Siddhartha, Picador.
Photo: Nikos Stephou
“You live the commons, you cannot talk about them, and even less theorize them.”
Silvia Federici (2018 [2019]) Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, Kairos.
Photo: Stelios Kallinikou
“I have no longer any taste for these refinements you call life, but shall dive again into brute matter.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited in, Jane Bennett (2009) Vibrant Matter, Duke University Press.
Photo: Mohammed Abdullah
Peter Eramian is a visual artist based in Nicosia. Eramian’s practice addresses the fading interplay between nature and human activity. Common building materials and found objects are handled in a play of agencies. Collaborations and laborious exercises of varying intensities inform the ethics and sculptural philosophy of Eramian’s practice. Together with Stelios Kallinikou they run the artist-led space Thkio Ppalies in Pallouriotissa.
With Il faut cultiver notre jardin for D-S, Eramian considers what it means to be (or crash) ‘down to earth’. The title is from Voltaire’s Candide and has been translated variously as “we must cultivate our garden”, “we must tend to our own affairs” or “we must work our land”.
