Extend the ideas of Kan and Zhou paper on Optimal Portfolio Construction under parameter uncertainty

In this dissertation, we extend the ideas of Raymond Kan and Guofu Zhou for optimal portfolio construction under parameter uncertainty. Kan and Zhou proved analytically that under parameter uncertainty, investing in the sample tangency portfolio and the riskless is not optimal. Based on this idea we will approach the portfolio construction under parameter uncertainty in a different way. We will optimise the expected out-of-sample performance of a portfolio using a numerical approach. Using Monte Carlo simulations we will develop an algorithm that calculates the expected out-of-sample performance of any portfolio rule. We will then extend this algorithm in order to be able to input new portfolio rules and test their performance.\ud \ud The new portfolio rules we introduce are based on shrinkages for the mean and covariance matrix of the assets returns. These shrinkages will have some parameters that will be chosen so that we optimise the expected out-of-sample performance of the input portfolio rule. A comparison is then done between the portfolio rules we introduce and Kan and Zhou portfolio rules

Be/come closer to home: Narratives of contested lands in the visual practices of Katerina Attalidou and Alexandra Handal

Women from Cyprus and Palestine are citizens of divided countries and have experienced conspiracies and invasions that have confiscated their homelands. This article investigates visual practices of women artists and the ways in which they are embedded in the space of each location. It aims to reflect on artists' experiences of borders, location and narrations of homeland. It focuses on the artistic practices of Greek-Cypriot artist Katerina Attalidou and Alexandra Handal, who engage in questioning and challenging issues on homeland, borders, history, citizenship, identity and exile. This article will enquire as to how the idea of homeland 'real or imagined' is represented in visual works and will investigate how the usage of images and narratives can challenge the concept of home. Through the discussion of images this article will consider how these practices serve as a reminder of exile and develop a critical understanding of contemporary events and our reaction to them

Let’s talk about peace over dinner: A cultural experience on memory, dislocation and the politics of belonging in Cyprus.

On Saturday 9 April 2011, Greek Cypriot artist Lia Lapithi invited a group of eighteen guests to join her for her own version of the Last Supper, a four-course dinner that took place in the warehouse of an old furniture factory in Nicosia, Cyprus. The dinner was the first project of a series of orchestrated meals that Lapithi hosted and participated, where the theme was hospitality and politics in Cyprus.1 Significant to Lapithi’s work are autobiographical experiences and the geopolitical division of Cyprus. Born in 1963 in Cyprus, Lapithi experienced at a young age the traumatic 1974 division of Cyprus and the on-going occupation of half of the island by Turkey.2 This article explores the significance of an orchestrated meal for the politics of belonging and remembering in contemporary Cyprus. It analyses the representation of the event by Lapithi, who engaged in questioning the meaning of peace by serving food as a ‘medium’ and as a ‘symbol of peace’. It also explores Lapithi’s strategies in communicating her own memories and experiences as a refugee who can visit her family’s house over the occupied northern side of Cyprus only as a guest. Through the discussion of food/taste and visuals, this article will consider how the dinner acts as a means of catharsis for the participants and develops a critical understanding of contemporary events in Cyprus and our reaction to them.N/

Re-claiming the Lost Home: The Politics of Nostalgia and Belonging in Women’s Art Practices in the Middle East

Despite the major changes that have taken place in the West following the interventions of the second-wave feminism, women from the Middle East are still affected by the politics of patriarchy, nationalism and militarism. The enduring armed conflict in the region has left scars on the society and its people. Although both men and women have to flee and live in exile, little is known about the experiences of women. Women’s experiences of exile is different to men’s due to their specific exilic conditions, which is impacted by the demands of social, political and cultural conditions. This paper explores the work of contemporary women artists who challenge in their practice the concepts of ‘home’, ‘exile’, ‘nostalgia’ and ‘belonging’. It will specifically discuss the work of refugee Greek Cypriot artist Klitsa Antoniou and Arab American artist Andrea Shaker. Both artists use domestic materials to create distressing scenes that re-create domestic environment(s) of their contested homes. It will analyse Klitsa Antoniou’s 2002 installation A Wall of Roses, in which she uses household objects as powerful devices to re-negotiate the post-1974 war trauma in Cyprus. The paper will discuss how the mundane household objects (plates, pans, tables, iron, scissors, knives) are transformed into reminder-instruments that act as metaphors of trauma and nostalgia for the lost home. Her usage of uncanny domestic utensils challenges the viewers to not forget her ancestral home. The work presents the ordinary utensils as disoriented objects that bear remembrance – a strategy used extensively by Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum. The paper will also explore the 2012 video work of Andrea Shaker home.not home, in which she employs her own migratory experience to re-create her ancestral home. Shaker is influenced by the conflicts in the Middle East, particularly those of her homeland Lebanon. The paper will examine and analyse the complexities and multiple meanings of re-constructing the migrant experience of ‘home’: home as the dwelling for individual and family histories; home as the place of comfort, domestic tensions and trauma. In constructing visual works that explore the interconnection between home, exile, nostalgia and belonging, Antoniou and Shaker are using artistic strategies to reclaim their lost homeland. Both artists use ordinary material to re-create a distressing domestic environment for the audience; these strategies are generated through the usage of household utensils and traditional Middle Eastern food. Through visual analysis of the works, this paper will provide a new perspective in understanding women artists’ artistic strategies in representing the exilic home and their homeland (both ‘lost’ and existing)

Rethinking the history of Cypriot art: Greek Cypriot women artists in Cyprus

This thesis brings together women artists art practices situated in five key periods of Cyprus socio-political history: British colonial rule, anti-colonial struggle, 1960 Independent, the 1974 Turkish invasion and its aftermath of a divided Cyprus, which remains the case in the present day. Such study has not been done before, and for this, the current thesis aims to provide a critical knowledge of the richness and diversity of Greek Cypriot women's art practices that have frequently been marginalised and rarely been written about or researched. As the title suggests, this thesis engages in rethinking the history of Cypriot art by focusing on the art produced by women artists in Cyprus. By focusing primarily on the work of Greek Cypriot women artists I am interested to explore the conditions within which, through which and against which, women negotiate political processes in Cyprus while making art that is predominantly engaged in specific politicised patterns. The meeting point for the artists is their awareness of being women artists living in a colonised, patriarchal country under Greek Cypriot nationality. While these artists assumed very different positions in their experience of the several phases of Cyprus history, they all negotiate in their practice territorial boundaries and specific identity patterns. Significant to my thesis are a number of questions that I discuss in relation to women artists professional careers and private lives: nationalism, militarism, patriarchy, male dominance, social and cultural codes, ethnic conflict, trauma, imposed displacement through war, memory and women's roles, especially as mothers, in modern and contemporary Cyprus. Thus, I address questions of how women artists in Cyprus experienced such phenomena and how these phenomena affected both their lives and their art practices

Who are we, Where do we come from, Where are we going to? Writing Greek Cypriot Women's Art Histories in Contemporary Cyprus

This chapter engages with material so far insufficiently examined in art history: the work of Greek Cypriot women artists. The work of these women artists has received little attention and has frequently been marginalised from official art histories. This chapter develops a framework to explain some of the processes and conditions that affected Greek Cypriot women artists’ lives and careers. It is based on research I carried out for my doctoral thesis at Loughborough University entitled Rethinking the History of Cypriot Art: Greek Cypriot Women Artists in Cyprus. In this chapter I begin with reviewing perspectives on writing Greek Cypriot women artists’ histories. I will address the socio-political conditions from which Greek Cypriot artists emerged and their problematic position, which has been associated with patriarchy and nationalism. This matter is explored by a number of contemporary Greek Cypriot feminists: patriarchal society and national politics left no space for women in Cyprus to struggle for women’s rights, to contest patriarchy or to gain public visibility.2Significant to my discussion is how the socio-political conditions affected Greek Cypriot women artists’ lives and careers. Within this context I will use interview material to refine our understanding of how women artists responded to these socio-political conditions. The works of Loukia Nicolaidou At the Fields (c.1933) and Rhea Bailey Memories of the Yard (1979) will be analysed – their work underlines discourses related to gender relations and socio-political conditions in contemporary Cyprus.N/

Mediating Patriotism and Triumph through the National Press: Newspaper Content and Journalistic Perceptions

Patriotism and triumph are directly affiliated to historical memories and to every country’s history, since every nation / society’s need to proclaim its national achievements in every aspect of daily life, from politics to economy, science and beyond. Following several countries’ turbulent history, since their origins, traditionally the media tend to express the feeling of patriotism that overwhelms the local society. In this perspective, patriotism and triumph concerning national achievements seem to be among the traditional characteristics in the journalistic content of the press. However, although evident in the media content, it is not yet identified in what extend they exist and through which characteristics. This papers addresses these two issues in the content of the current national press in Cyprus, aiming to examine the specific characteristics of patriotism and triumph and the extend up to which they are evident today in the journalistic practices. Taking into account the loyal – facilitator model of journalism, the research is based both on content analysis of the national newspapers with the higher circulation and on a survey concerning the journalists’ opinion that work for these newspapers. The sample of content analysis includes an extensive number of news items, since the research was conducted in a two years period of time, while more than two thirds of the journalists working in these newspapers participated in the survey. The aim of this paper is to clarify whether the national press remains attached to practices of the past or new modes of journalism have arisen

National identity and the politics of belonging in Greek Cypriot visual culture

For decades the display of blue and white colours in Cyprus have been synonymous with Greek nationalism. During British colonial rule in Cyprus, there was a rise of nationalism. As a result, the Greek population of Cyprus demanded Enosis (union) with Greece. The rise of Greek nationalism during the National Liberation Struggle 1955-59 was, for the most part, denoted through a national ‘spectacle’ that included the national anthem and the flag. According to Rebecca Bryant (2004: 164), ‘anything which bore the blue and white colors of Greece […] could be constructed as symbolic of Greek nationalism’. This chapter investigates the visual representation of Greek flags and the way images convey nationalism in Cyprus. It focuses on the work of Greek Cypriot artists Takis Frangoudes and George Georgiou, who both employed visual strategies to expose historical and socio-political events in Cyprus. It will explore how the usage of ‘national spectacles’ represented the political events during the anti-colonial struggle. It will also examine how the usage of the blue and white colours of the Greek flag constructs a sense of collective and political belonging during the long and violent history of Cyprus.N/

Gendered narratives in Adamantios Diamantis’ The World of Cyprus

In this paper, I examine Adamantios Diamantis’ painting The World of Cyprus as a representation of a male-dominated society where women are marginalised. Through the analysis of the artwork, I will consider how the work presents a traditional ‘world of Cyprus’ that was beginning to disappear during the post-1960s. I will refer to Diamantis’ work as an example to explore gender relations and socio-political conditions in patriarchal Cyprus. I will argue that socio-political conditions in Cyprus left little space for women to contest patriarchy, to fight for gender equality, or to gain public visibility.N/