Visual artist inspired by fellow cosmopolitan C.P. Cavafy
Multimedia artist Sister Sylvester developed an affinity with poet C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933), a fellow cosmopolitan forging an identity while navigating connected, and yet vastly different, cultures, through a diary that the poet began at 19, when his family temporarily relocated from Alexandria, Egypt, to Istanbul. The New York- and Istanbul-based artist’s performance, “Constantinopoliad,” taken from the title Cavafy gave his diary and commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, premiered in the US last April in “Archive of Desire,” a Cavafy-inspired festival, with a score by Egyptian musician Nadah El Shazhly. The performance is coming to Athens. [Zachary Schulman]
