Ten free events in Nicosia close the Cyprus Insula exhibition, from coins to colonial archaeology

The Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation in Nicosia has announced ten events to mark the end of its exhibition Cyprus Insula, which closes on 17 January 2027. The programme, called Negotiating knowledge (in Greek, Η γνώση ως τόπος διαπραγμάτευσης), runs from 20 November 2026 to 16 January 2027 and brings in artists, researchers, educators and people working in culture in Cyprus. Admission is free; the workshops for adults and children must be booked in advance.

According to the Foundation, the events answer themes and exhibits from the first two of the exhibition's five acts, Act I, The people of Cyprus, and Act II, The inherent Cypriot insularity. Those two acts look again at the island's material culture and at the accounts that have usually been told about it, and the programme takes up the same question of how knowledge is produced, accepted or contested. The formats are mixed: a screening, talks, performances, participatory workshops and sessions for children. The Foundation says it will post details of each event on its website and social media.

November and December

The programme opens on 20 November with a screening of Cyprus is an island followed by a panel with Keti Papadema, Stelios Kallinikou and Demetra Ignatiou. On 22 November Nurtane Karagil and Rina Soukiouroglou lead an educational workshop, “De-mapping the familiar: a journey beyond boundaries”, for children aged 10 and over and for teenagers.

December has six events. Petroula Hadjittofi runs a participatory workshop on 5 December, At the city's tables: foodscapes, urban identities and modernity. Hadjittofi is an archaeologist who wrote her doctorate on jewellery in Cyprus between 1830 and 1960 and published a bilingual book on street food in 2019. Giorgos Bizios gives a site-specific performance, I can hear your voice from a thousand miles away, on 11 December, and on 13 December Chara Kolesidou leads When Cyprus was born from the sea, a workshop for children aged 6 to 12.

The talk closest to the history of archaeology on the island is Iris Pissaride's on 17 December, A perforated monolith. Reading colonial archaeology within and against the archive. British rule in Cyprus lasted from 1878 to 1960, and its colonial government passed the Antiquities Laws of 1905 and 1935, which set the rules for excavation, dealing and export. On 19 December Salamis Aysegul Sentug Tugyan holds a creative writing workshop, Through the artwork's gaze: writing as a way of knowing, and on 23 December Emiddio Vasquez gives a lecture performance, Numismatics: Coins vs Icons.

January

On 15 January Dimitris Venizelos gives a talk, “Spatial transformations. Vokolida’s landscape through photographic archives”. Vokolida is a village of the Karpas, in the Famagusta district. The area has been illegally occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion. The programme ends on 16 January with Stories in song, a performance of Cypriot narrative songs by the Cyprus Music Archive.

The exhibition

Cyprus Insula: History, Memory, Reality opened on 4 July 2024. The Foundation staged it for the 50th anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and it is curated by Yiannis Toumazis and Demetra Ignatiou. It sets antiquities beside folk art, contemporary art, historical maps, manuscripts, engravings and archival material, drawn from the Foundation's own collections and from public and private lenders, among them the Department of Antiquities. Its title comes from Codex 655, a manuscript of Ptolemy's Geography of the late 13th or early 14th century, which the Foundation describes as carrying the earliest known map of Cyprus; the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos lent it, and it is the first time the codex has been shown in Cyprus.

The Foundation's archaeological holdings include the George and Nefeli Giabra Pierides collection, donated in 1999 by Clio and Solon A. Triantafyllides and shown since 2002 in a museum on its premises. The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 to 19:00, and its book, edited by Toumazis and Ignatiou, was launched in September.