Location: Karava 11, 2114, Platy Aglantzia, Cyprus | +357 99586369
December – June 2023
the 5th Artist Residency in the Ixodos series of Artistic Exchanges taking place in Cyprus and Brasil
The Eimaste Mother House is an artist space in Nicosia, Cyprus dedicated to engaged and restorative artistic practices of community and co-presence. It is a place of mutual support for families in transition, where we gather to tell stories, share food, dance in circles, sing, share skills, thank and celebrate life. The Eimaste Mother House receives artists to co-work in a rich, vibrant atmosphere and to live together.
The Eimaste Mother House is directed by Chrystalleni Loizidou (PhD), Cyprus-based artist and cultural studies scholar with an integrated life-practice in community-focused and participatory art, openness, and technological freedom. It is inspired by the timeless emergence of Mother Houses all over the world with a mission of care for children, for each other, for ourselves and for our environment.
We invite you to enter our circles, share in our pooled resources, and enter into a respectful exchange with our community.
**Starting Themes
Cultivating a culture of co-living in connection and harmony
Intentional Community-building Tools
Raising free children & “being the village”
Positive transformations in schooling
https://parentscollective.eimaste.net/
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Program
Some of us are meeting every Wednesday morning and holding Wednesdays as community days in Eimaste: Motherhouse in Nicosia-Aglantzia. You are welcome to take part in any of the following:
The house is open early in the day & women are welcome to be there, have meetings, do yoga, use a treadmill we inherited, or co-work (lots of space).
Around 9am some of us gather in the kitchen to organise & cook.
10am we have workshops / share gifts. E.g.
10-11 Sacred Belly Dance with Sylvia & them a women’s circle of needs and offerings or of feelings.
Or / and Art of Feminine Presence with Elena (more info upon request).
Around 13:30 we have community lunch.
We coordinate this on Monday mornings & try to make enough so that families can take away food or distribute where needed.
In the afternoon we open to kids and hold space for a family cooperative with adult skill-sharing & alternating between waldorf-inspired activities and free play for kids. There’s a big yard & lots of materials.
Residents
Nafsika Demetriou aka Astrid Johnson
Our artist residency program in collaboration with Nafsika is focused on occupational-therapy and mindful co-presence. Nafsika sews steampunk costumes & medieval corsets, along with doing therapeutic woodwork.
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Elena Buscarini
Elena is a certified RYT500 Hatha and Vinyasa Yoga Teacher, with a background in Trauma Informed Yoga.
She took her first yoga class at the age of 17 – when struggling with chronic pain (fibromyalgia), yoga has been a saving grace, and she vouched to share its restorative powers with others.
Ten years later, In 2015 she became a certified teacher while living in the UAE, and after moving to Lebanon in 2019 she specialised in Trauma Informed Yoga whilst volunteering with a NGO coordinating a project called ‘’Yoga for Peace’’, aimed at bringing the practice of yoga in refugees settlements and women’s centres in the region.
As a teacher, Elena realises that yoga is not a “one size fits all” practice, and that every person is on a different path. She tries to offer her students the opportunity to take that path in their own way at their own pace, to modify when needed and to honour how they feel at all times.
Elena finds immense joy, satisfaction and inspiration in seeing students discover their own personal yoga journey and hopes to nurture and encourage them along their way.’
@thewonderingyogini
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February: Gaianna
I have found myself in a lot of different roles in my life. Today I identify more with being a community builder, traveller, facilitator, artist, and a researcher of the human experience. I’m passionate about deep ecology, self-development, spirituality, shamanism, tantra, relationships, somatic healing modalities, dance, music, handicraft and art, among other things. I cocreate projects in different organisations that promote sustainability, holistic lifestyle and community-based paradigms.
I’ve visited a number of ecocommunities around Europe since 2019 and have lived long term in two. Through these experiences I have become a firm believer that this is a lifestyle best suited for me. For this I have been collecting community-building tools and self-development modalities, which make coming back to a communal and holistic lifestyle possible. I am passionate about sharing these practises through events, courses and workshops, such as EDE (Ecovillage Design Education) in Gaia Academy and other educational and research projects in many community focused organisations. In the autumn of 2023 my path led me to live, work, and train in the Tamera Healing Biotope ecocommunity in Portugal, an international training and experimental site for development of peace research villages. A big focus in this community is on freeing eros from fear. They believe that there will be no peace until there is war in love, thus they are tackling the sources of war in love. I will share openly and honestly my experience with living in that community and the practise of love and sexuality free from fear- how it looks like practically, how it impacts the emotional life, how it challenges prevalent narratives around relationships, love and sexuality, why this is such an important topic for this community and more.
May: Erika Wieser
I am a Kindergarten Teacher since 1978. Two years working in the Linz Tobacco Factory Kindergarten in Upper Austria showed me that I didn’t know anything about “difficult children” and that I had to continue my education. I went to Vienna for the next two years to complete the school for children with disabilities and then worked for the next 3 years in Christoph Lesigang’s outpatient department for children with multiple disabilities. Professor Lesigang was an excellent anthroposophic doctor for children and I was lucky to learn a lot from his behavior with children and parents. I worked with the children and gave advice to the parents. After the wonderful years in Vienna I came by accident to Greece where I fell in love with my husband Dimitris Papaioannou, a painter of Byzantine icons. When we came back to Austria, I worked for the next 10 years with children with severe disabilities in a dedicated kindergarten. In 1994 my daughter Myriam came to this world and changed my life. In 1996 I started studying Waldorf Education in Vienna which lasted 3 years, completing my final thesis on the subject of the tactile sense. For 5 years I was special assistant in the two Waldorf Kindergartens in Linz for children with additional needs, and finally, 13 years before my retirement, I started and led a natural Kindergarten on a farm focusing on Waldorf Education. Beside my work I taught for 10 years Basal Stimulation for Kindergarten teachers for children with additional needs. For three years I was working with adolescents with very difficult childhoods and trauma from the war in Bosnia. I am a trainer of health gymnastics since 1985. I am a beekeeper since 2005. Now I am in pension and I am lucky to do what I like most: to share my experiences.