DISPLACE

to displace > verb 1. move (sb/sth) from the usual or correct place 2. take over the place, position, or role of (sb/sth) 3. (especially of war or natural disaster) force (someone) to leave their home > OXFORD English Dictionary

For 35 years Cyprus has been separated. Until today you find on both sides of the demarcation line abandoned places, homes and deserted temples, that indicate
the displacement of its former inhabitants. Especially the empty, converted and destroyed churches in the North and the abandoned mosques in the South are demonstrators of the ethnical separation,of the replacement and absence of a community.

The work was realized with a postgraduate scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

‚New Life Painted on the Ruins‘
Article in: ‚Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung‘, 25.10.2009/Nr.43, Author Niklas Maak

The dividing line that splits Cyprus since 1974 is both political, as well as religious: The south is Christian Orthodox, the north is Muslim. Photographer Johanna Diehl shows the ruins of abandoned places of worship on both sides of the divide. They recount the drama of a country. By Niklas Maak

History has left behind ruins on both sides. In 1974, the president of Cyprus was overthrown in a coup supported by the Greek junta; then came the pogroms against the Muslim population, whereupon Turkey occupied the Northern part of the island. What followed was a dramatic exodus in both directions; the story of which is still evident in places of worship on both sides. In the south stand abandoned mosques, gaps in the architectural story of the republic. In the Turkish occupied North, many of the abandoned churches underwent different treatment: many were transformed into mosques.

Johanna Diehl, one of the most interesting photographers of her generation, has recorded these emptied, idle or transformed places of worship on both sides. The formal rigor of her photos are only at first sight reminiscent of the Becher school; their specific quality lies precisely in their narrative details and the divergence from typification. Graffiti sprayed over an iconostasis; all images removed from another. Elsewhere churches are covered in carpets; lines drawn with crepe tape point in the direction of Mecca and the prayer niche, the mihrab is simply painted on the wall. In these inscriptions and superscriptions of architecture, the complex political history of the country reveals itself in a surprisingly haunting way. As in Johanna Diehl’s previous work about Odessa, her almost surreally precise eye for minimal formal details – the pattern on a shirt, the tape on the floor – has succeeded in shedding light on the individual, as well as collective fate of human beings. The fact that these people are rarely visible in the images reinforces the effect of the projection, like in a Hitchcock movie. An effect also evident in Diehl’s previous series “Frozen Spaces”, in which she documented the rooms of the deceased and other places that have been preserved unchanged, where the rooms gradually transform from the stages housing everyday life into monuments of absent existence.

(Until November 7th at the Atelierfrankfurt. The series will be shown in the Gallery Fiebach&Minninger, which represents Diehl, in Cologne from January 2010.)

‚Reading History into the Spaces‘
Article in: ‚journal Frankfurt‘, 22/2009, Author Grit Weber

Since 2008, Johanna Diehl has repeatedly traveled to Cyprus and transported her large format camera to small villages either in the Turkish north or in the Greek southern part of the island. There she sets up her equipment in former churches or mosques and photographs with long exposures and minimal aperture. The pictures tell the story of the wounds that the places have received since the ethnic cleansings of the 1970’s. They are scenes of abandoned Orthodox churches into which prayer niches and minbar have been built in since the expulsion of the Greek population. Carpets with ornamental decorations point to Mecca. Or images of abandoned mosques in the south of the island. The walls were whitewashed just shortly before the photographer’s arrival; but piles of pigeon droppings still lie on the bare floors. Sacred spaces, no matter in honor of what God, are always highly symbolic. History is full of destroyed, mutilated or simply reappropriated spaces. But Diehl’s photographs not only add another layer of images to these histories, they also tell the tale of how tentative such endeavors are. (...). >> Wisdom is transcultural, timeless and learnable: for example in this show.

('Displace', Exhibition, Ffm: Atelierfrankfurt, Hohenstaufenstraße 13-5, until Nov 7)