— What methods do you use to research and engage with a site, and how are these translated into your illustration practice?

— My approach to spatial research is influenced by Forensic Architecture methodologies which prior to visiting a site involves open source investigation, the process of collecting and compiling as much publicly available information as possible. When conducting research on RAF Akrotiri, this included journalistic and academic texts, social media posts, declassified files, parliamentary announcements and archival photographs; but when it came to Pergama, I found that the richest sources for research were the blogs of former RAF personnel who were stationed at the RAF Pergamos camp prior to its demolition. The blogs include personal stories which reference information about the GCHQ surveillance systems operating from the former camp, as well as information about the years the camp was active, the infrastructures it once hosted and the rhythm of day-to-day life in this former makeshift place. The stories are interwoven with captioned photographs of the site of RAF Pergamos; I use illustration to cross-reference these with my own drawings and photographs of the camp in its current form to understand the site from multiple temporal vantage points, a process influenced by Forensic Architecture’s cartographic regression methodology.

When on-site, my primary method for documentation is live sketching, which is intuitive, fast-paced, and often in inconvenient settings such as in a moving car or under time pressure. I also use photography where possible, sometimes with the intention of collecting photographs or video footage as a reference for future illustrations to increase the capacity for distribution when it comes to sites that would be considered a national security violation to document. Field notes, or observational and illustrative writing, are also part of my process. Talking to people who live in or regularly visit the areas I am researching is a most important component; my research in Pergama was hugely inspired by my friend Arçın Çelikesmer, a Cypriot poet and PhD researcher at the University of Kent, who guided and took me to my first visit of the abandoned RAF camp in Pergama in April 2025. Arçın’s PhD research relates to Cypriot gardens and trees, and his narrations of the trees of Pergama influenced my experience and representation of the site. We later collaborated when I illustrated a poem he wrote about the abandoned RAF camp in Pergama titled On the Demolition Map of Pergamos Camp, in a zine edited by Florenza Deniz Incirli titled Of the Passing Winds - & Other Such Future Cyprus Souvenirs: A Zine on the SBAs in Cyprus.

— Your work foregrounds political histories and contemporary events, importantly the ongoing genocide in Gaza. What role do you think illustration can play in bringing attention to these events and marginalised narratives?

— Speaking from the context I consider myself aligned with, there is a growing amount of Cypriot artists using visual, textual and auditory means to make work around Cyprus’s geostrategic position in the Eastern Mediterranean region, the history of the island as a US-UK surveillance outpost, and the ongoing role of the RAF bases in the perpetration of the Gaza genocide and more broadly sustaining the NATO military presence in the region. Many of us working artists from Cyprus feel an inclination to use our practices towards creating informative and critical work that challenges internal propagandistic narratives across both sides of the partition, and recontextualises the history of our island when facing a foreign audience. This of course includes bringing attention to the specificities of the ongoing British colonial presence in the island, including the more covert American military involvement in the bases, the increased deployments and military transfers into and through RAF Akrotiri throughout the Gaza genocide and the Cypriot governement’s collaborations with the British such as their allowance for Cypriot port and airport facilities to be used by the RAF and USAF as an extension of the SBAs.

Some Cyprus-based artists whose work engages with the aforementioned subject matters and who have been primary reference points in my illustration practice include Fisherwomxn, a group of cultural workers working across writing, publishing and performing arts to create dialogue around feminist and anti-colonial thought. They have curated and written many zines and other forms of publications that have a pedagogical element, often culminating in events known as “co-learning assemblies”. Another reference point has been Lower Levant Company, an artist-researcher duo investigating Cyprus’s geopolitical and economic entanglements across the Levant and beyond. A primary source of inspiration in the recent years has been the artist collective Endrosia, who in their curation of the Cyprus pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale collaborated with Lower Levant Company to create a fictional intelligence agency known as Forever Informed, investigating Cyprus’s position as an “antenna island” under the title “On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…”. Contributing as an illustrator to this artist-subculture (also with a UK-based audience in mind) lends an advantage as engaging with the aforementioned sites in Cyprus through illustration invites the viewer into a deeper experience of witnessing - through layering multiple states of time, interweaving historical legacies into the present day in the form of images.

An illustrator who became an inspiration in her use of drawing to depict the present through textured representations of people and places is Bayan Abu Nahla, a Palestinian visual artist who spent her childhood in Rafah, in the south of Gaza. Her work has been described as a form of diary-keeping, where she captures “ephemeral feelings and thoughts through pen and paper” – I love her work for its immediate quality where the intimate scenes she depicts feel situated in the present. When I began working with representations of the trees in Pergama, I was inspired by “Revolution is a forest that the colonist can’t burn”, a series of drawings by the Palestinian multidisciplinary artist Xaytun Ennasr. In this series she explores a revolutionary relationship with nature, positioning trees not as resources for extraction but as symbols of resistance and devotion, as beings with souls and as political agents.

— Looking ahead, how do you hope to develop this research and your wider illustration practice? What is coming next?

— In September 2026 I will be beginning my studies on the MA Research Architecture programme at Goldsmiths. This is a course which brings together graduates from a wide range of disciplines who are engaging with practice-led work in the context of politically engaged thinking around specific spaces, sites and environments. The programme is based in the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths which is organised around practice-led research that investigates the urgent political conditions of our time, and is also home to the Forensic Architecture research agency. In my pursuit of study there I am hoping to learn new architectural and investigative methodologies and acquire a political education that would enhance my illustration practice. I intend to conduct fieldwork in Cyprus in the duration of my studies and hope to share this work in illustrative contexts in the future.

Since December 2025, I have been part of a collaborative artistic research project with artist and filmmaker Lujain Tamer Mansour. In June 2025, we co-curated a duo exhibition titled Chasing “israeli” radio: re/encounters through cracks in the mountains at Endrosia Project Space in Nicosia, as part of a residency for Endrosia Collective. Our project is based around "israeli" radio interference in the Kyrenia mountain range in North Cyprus, which we originally picked up by chance in August 2024 and attempted to recapture in December 2025. The fieldwork included similar illustrative research methodologies to those I used in my research in the RAF bases, but also broadened into photography, moving image, sound and written documentation through my collaboration with Lujain. The project grew from the start-point of “israeli” radio interference into themes around Turkish militarisation, entanglements of infrastructure and geopolitical realities, and serendipity/chance encounters as a method of enquiry. This has expanded into a long-term research project that will eventually take form in a publication. We have been working on this at House of Annetta, a non-institutional space in Brick Lane used primarily by artists working around spatial justice issues, where we were invited to participate in the Incubator Programme, an opportunity for artists, organisers and researchers to develop work in the house’s desk space and share work over communal dinners. House of Annetta is home to Slow + Dirty Press, a feminist risograph press that I’ve been active within over the past year, and where we plan on printing our publication.