Avraam Hirodontis
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
Avraam Hirodontis is a Cypriot artist based in Limassol. He works mostly with fabric and canvas, cutting, stitching, and piecing them together until they begin to take on their own form. The work develops slowly, through touch and repetition. In pieces like “Landscape I” and “Counterpoint,” he uses cloth tinted with Cypriot soil instead of paint. Repair and care are built into the making. The visible joins show his patience and stay with the viewer.
Q: You work with fabric and canvas almost like they have their own life. When did that start for you?
A: It started some time ago, when I realised that canvas—the material traditionally used for painting—has its own physical and tactile presence. I stopped seeing it merely as a surface for an image and began treating it as an active material in itself. For a while, I made works using only the canvas, without paint, letting its texture and tension carry the work. Over time, I also became aware of my connection to certain objects and textiles, and how others hold similar attachments to materials that surround them. That awareness connected with Jane Bennett’s idea of vibrant matter—that materials have their own vitality and agency. It made me more attentive to how fabric can hold energy, memory, and emotion, and that’s something I continue to explore through my textile practice.
Q: In “Landscape I” you use soil as colour. What did working with the land teach you about painting?
A: Working with the land reminded me that pigment should never be taken for granted. There’s a lot of unseen labour and transformation behind colour—especially when it comes directly from the land. Engaging with soil revealed how painting involves a process that’s both physical and temporal: collecting, grinding, sifting, testing. It required a slower rhythm, more patience, and a willingness to accept unpredictability—not just tolerate it, but embrace it as part of the work’s life. Through this process, I also found myself reintroducing colour into my practice in a way that felt grounded and meaningful, rather than decorative. The colour wasn’t something applied; it was something unearthed.
Q: Time and repair keep showing up in your work. Does making art ever feel like fixing something?
A: I wouldn’t call it fixing—more like caring for what’s already there. Repair, for me, is about acknowledging traces of damage and giving them space rather than trying to conceal them. Tim Ingold’s idea of thinking through making resonates deeply with how I work: the slow, repetitive gestures of stitching, layering, and sometimes undoing become ways of thinking with the material. Through that rhythm, ideas about presence, absence, and repair emerge naturally, without needing to be resolved.
Q: “Counterpoint” plays with weight and softness. How do you know when those two click?
A: It’s mostly an intuitive process. I work by responding to how materials behave—the way fabric collapses, stretches, or resists—and I adjust until a kind of visual balance appears. There’s a moment when the piece feels settled, like the elements are holding each other in tension. “Counterpoint” reflects a newer aspect of my work, where I’m exploring how weight and softness can coexist—how something can appear both fragile and grounded at once.
Q: Light and transparency run through a lot of your pieces. What do they give you in the studio?
A: I always think of the work in relation to the space that surrounds it, and light is perhaps the most active part of that space. It shifts constantly, changing how a surface behaves and how materials reveal or conceal themselves. Transparency, on the other hand, often challenges me practically because of its delicate nature—it demands care and precision. Yet that same delicacy brings vulnerability and clarity, which I find compelling. These qualities remind me that a work never stands apart; it’s always in dialogue with its environment and the conditions of light that shape it.
Q: Cyprus appears in your work both personally and politically. How do those layers come together for you?
A: It wasn’t always like this. For a long time, Cyprus was simply where I was from—a backdrop rather than a subject. That changed when I began to understand my family’s—and consequently the island’s—history more deeply. I had always known their stories, but as a child they felt ordinary, almost like something that happens to everyone. It doesn’t. Realising that was a turning point. It made me see how personal histories are tied to larger political circumstances, and how those traces continue to live in the landscape and in the materials around us.
Since then, Cyprus has entered my work quietly, through materials and gestures rather than through direct reference. Sometimes it’s in the soil, sometimes in the cloth or in the way I handle repair. These elements carry memory without declaring it. I think that’s how the personal and the political meet in my work—not through representation, but through presence.
