at Nilgün Güney’s Art Studio at the ‘Witches‘ Cauldron’ in Nicosia

By Heidi Trautmann

You don’t know the ‘Witches Cauldron’? It is a cozy place full of witches hanging around, cats looking at you out of green eyes, a place in the old Arabahmet Quarter where you can meet with Nicosia’s artistic people, painters, writers and poets and where music is made. It is the Studio Café run by the artist Nilgün Güney and her son Ateş Kozal, also an artist and music composer.

On the second floor Nilgün Güney has her art studio where she teaches her art students.

Now from Dec 4 until Dec 31 she and her students will show their work ‘Small Things’ which turn around Nicosia.

Nilgün is the founder of EMAA, the European Mediterranean Art Association, and also the daughter of the first Turkish Cypriot painter and art teacher in the understanding of Western art, Ismet V. Güney, after whom an Art Centre is named. He is also the creator of the Cypriot flag which you see flying in the southern part of the island since 1960 together with the Greek flag.

Nilgün Güney - I call her the mother of the art scene - had started to gather around her the young artists and when the gates between the two parts of the island opened in 2003, she organised in her function as president of EMAA, first encounters with the artists in the south, bicommunal events, workshops and exhibitions. I have accompanied them on such occasions and taken part myself, an exciting time it was.