New artist residency programme in Cyprus

The Cyprus Artist Residency is a new initiative from the Cyprus Academy of Arts, offering visual artists an opportunity to work for an extended period of time on the development of their practice. Only recently announced, the residency scheduled for 2021 is now inviting artists to take part.

British-Irish conceptual artist Helen Kirwan has been selected as the first Artist in Residence, and the Cyprus Academy of Arts (CAA) will provide the artist with studio space and facilities to develop new work over a period of three months starting in January. The residency will conclude with an exhibition in April 2021, in the Academy’s Gallery.

Kirwan is an artist working with performance, moving image and installation. Recurring themes are memory and memorial and fragment and trace. She is interested in the question of what is memory, how might it function and be visually represented and in performative journeys as a medium for the metaphorical construction of memory.

“This residency reflects our goal as an Institution of becoming an international laboratory for the creation and the diffusion of contemporary art as well as the development of research culture,” says Simon Pruciak, CAA Programmes Director. “Hosting Helen, who exhibited in the last three Venice Biennales, will give our students a unique opportunity to participate in the making process of a new body of work by an established international artist.”

Focusing on visual arts, but also encouraging crossings and interactions with other disciplines, the CAA residency programme aims to present contemporary art in all its diversity, and to offer a permanent dialogue with the developments and the most recent debates within the art world.

Kirwan says: “I am very excited to have been invited as Artist in Residence. CAA’s teaching and learning environment is of tremendous inspiration to practising artists. I look forward to engaging with this creative ethos and to exploring the rich cultural heritage and diversity of Cyprus situated at the crossroads of Asia, Europe and Africa.”

The Academy is now accepting applications for its 2021 residency programme. For more information on the application process visit www.cyprusartistresidency.com

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