Junyi Wu, 2026


The necklace was made in Cyprus, a small island located on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Though it was far away from the political center of the Byzantine Empire, it was near the Eastern border of the empire that witnessed conflicts of the empires with the neighboring Persians and the kingdom of Iberia in the early 6th century. 

“No longer is any place inaccessible to me: calm waters are traversed by Italian ships from northern Black Sea to the far reaches of Ethiopia.” The verse written by a poet from Constantinople vividly captured the ease of communication of that area while also hinted at the change happening in the empire during that period of time. Conflicts nevertheless, the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire saw an unprecedented connectivity of different cultures and ethnicities that included but not limited to Romans, Persians, Ethiopians, and Georgians, and Cyprus itself was also a stage opened to large human mobility of the 6th Century.