Arriving in Cyprus as an Irish passport holder is a geographical reminder of just how far Europe stretches. At its eastern edge, the island carries a history that reaches deep into antiquity, layered with the cultures, myths and migrations of the Mediterranean.
Associated with Aphrodite since ancient times, Cyprus has long been known as the Island of Love. It is also becoming an increasingly interesting place to encounter contemporary art, not least through XeniArtSpace, the art foundation and public gallery founded and curated by Xenia Kulbachevskaya. “Our main mission is to introduce local audiences to contemporary trends in art, by providing opportunities to see outstanding artists from different generations and cultures in one space,” explains Xenia. XeniArtSpace is run by an all-female team, including co-curator Maria Stocker, who studied Psychology of Arts, Creativity and Neuroaesthetics at Goldsmiths, University of London. For Stocker, the current exhibition represents an opportunity to bring together a particularly broad group of artists. “Our latest exhibition, CHANNELLED, represents a rare opportunity to view iconic female artists spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together a variety of museum-quality artworks, vibrant paintings, sculpture and photography.”
Co-curator Maria Stocker
CHANNELLED: Women in Art Across Centuries – North Tower, Trilogy Plaza, Limassol
Teresa Solar Abboud, Olga de Amaral, Lynne Drexler, Tracey Emin, Inka Essenhigh, Leonor Fini, Fernanda Galvão, Maro Gorky, Hayv Kahraman, Leiko Ikemura, Pia Krajewski, Emily Kraus, Konstantina Krikzoni, Lydia Masterkova, Sabine Moritz, Élise Peroi, Georg Wilson The first impression on entering XeniArtSpace is one of scale. The gallery rises several storeys, creating a vast vertical space in which the works have room to breathe. It is an imposing setting, but one that allows the exhibition to move freely between generations, materials and very different ideas about what painting, sculpture and photography can do.
Teresa Solar Abboud, Emily Kraus, Olga de Amaral
A fitting introduction is American artist Emily Kraus’ monumental Nest Time 1, an energetic collision of colour, rhythm and repetition. Its making was almost as important as its final appearance. Kraus fed a continuous loop of canvas around a cubic structure, painting only small sections before moving the material onwards.
She could never see the entire composition while working. Memory, chance and intuition therefore became part of the process. The resulting accumulation of marks rolls across the canvas in repeated waves, leaving visible traces of how the work came into being.
Alongside Kraus’ enormous canvas, Olga de Amaral’s Nébula 8 offers a quieter and more concentrated presence. Still working at 94, the Colombian artist is the exhibition’s senior practitioner and an internationally recognised figure in fibre art.
Combining Japanese paper, linen, gesso, acrylic and gold leaf, de Amaral creates a tactile, finely constructed work that appears almost weightless. Its physical delicacy contrasts sharply with the scale of Kraus’ canvas, while both artists share an interest in repetition, material and the transformation of surface.
Georg Wilson
At the other end of the generational spectrum is Gen Z British artist Georg Wilson, whose Bejewelled presents a luminous green female figure in a pose recalling Rodin’s The Thinker. Stag beetles crawl across the contemplative body, introducing an unsettling natural presence into an otherwise familiar portrait format.
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin takes the exhibition somewhere more intimate. Her mid-1990s photographs turn the artist herself into both subject and surface, combining image with the immediacy of handwritten language.
THIS IS MY FIRST / I LOVE YOU SARAH is a stripped-back tribute to Emin’s intense friendship with fellow YBA Sarah Lucas during the formative years of their careers. Emin recalled the relationship with characteristic directness: “This woman made me feel confident. I thought her work was absolutely wonderful… we were quite in love with each other at first.”
The late Leonor Fini brings an altogether different kind of female presence to CHANNELLED. Her superbly surreal Sphinge transforms the nude into something part woman, part feline and part mythological creature.
The sphinge, or female sphinx, became a recurring alter ego for Fini, embodying mystery, independence and erotic power. With remarkably economical painterly gestures, she constructs a hybrid body, its hair cascading over an animal form with hind legs and a tail. Yet the gaze remains unmistakably human, confrontational and self-possessed.
Hayv Kahraman’s Plucked is equally arresting, although its beauty is deliberately uncomfortable. A serene female figure delicately removes human eyes from a forest of dark, conjoined eyebrows reminiscent of Frida Kahlo. The eyes become symbols of authenticity, while the exaggerated brows suggest a challenge to conventional ideas of beauty.
Kahraman’s work is also rooted in personal history. Having fled Iraq as a child, she has repeatedly addressed displacement, identity and the ways migrant bodies are observed, classified and controlled. Plucked carries those concerns into an image that is both elegant and deeply disturbing.
Élise Peroi’s Anachorèse shifts the mood once again. Painted silk, linen and wood form a Japanese-inspired screen that operates almost as a physical passage into an interior state. It is a work concerned less with the outward appearance of the body than with what lies behind it.
That sense of looking inward runs through much of CHANNELLED. Despite the differences in age, background and medium, the artists gathered here repeatedly return to questions of identity, memory, the body and the construction of the self.
A visit to XeniArtSpace does not end with the main exhibition. Across the sea-facing piazza, two further presentations extend the theme of women as conduits for artistic expression.
CHANNELLED: CYPRUS – Ground Floor, East Tower, Trilogy Plaza
Elena Anastasiou, Andrea Charalambides, Rafaella Christoforou, Natalia Maltseva, Elizabeth Nenarokov, Thekla Papadopoulou, Carolina Souss, Alexandra Stroganova, Ilan Vigo
CHANNELLED: CYPRUS brings together nine contemporary women artists whose lives and practices are connected to the island.
Elizabeth Nenarokov is particularly striking, with a collection of colourist ceramics, bronzes, and what might best be described as magical-creature vases. The works push ceramics beyond their traditional boundaries, combining craft, sculpture and an imaginative cast of forms.
CHANNELLED: PICTORIAL EXCERPTS – First Floor, East Tower, Trilogy Plaza
Julia Astreou-Christoforou, Daphne Christoforou
The final exhibition presents the work of mother and daughter Julia Astreou-Christoforou and Daphne Christoforou. Their relationship provides the starting point for a concentrated presentation encompassing painting, sculpture and textiles.
Together, the three exhibitions create a broader picture of contemporary female artistic practice, connecting international figures with artists working within and around Cyprus itself. XeniArtSpace may be relatively new to the international art circuit, but CHANNELLED makes a persuasive case for looking beyond the usual European art centres.