Socratis Socratous
Agropoetics: Soils/Bodies

The Cyprus Presidency and the Deputy Ministry of Culture organize and present, within the framework of the Cultural Programme of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026, the group exhibition Agropoetics: soils/bodies at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, curated by Dr Elena Parpa. The exhibition brings together more than fifty artists from Cyprus, both historical and contemporary, in order to suggest an open reading of the term “landscape” in connection with the related concepts of nature, countryside, land, place, and soil. The exhibition draws its point of departure from the observation of works in the State Collection of Cypriot Art. Employing what in art historical terms has been elaborated as “an ecological eye”, it expands its scope to investigate the multilayered relationship between art and landscape in the practice of Cypriot artists. The term “landscape” is considered in its expanded sense, wherein the experience of geomorphology, geology, light, and nature is intertwined with history and with conceptions of identity and belonging, towards a conception of art in direct relation to the earth.

Through diverse artistic approaches that draw observations from the Cypriot experience yet seek to connect with concerns that exceed local boundaries, the notion of landscape is investigated not only as representation and aesthetic experience, but also as a cultural construct, as a site in which relations of power are inscribed, as a contested terrain, as a natural resource subject to reckless exploitation, as a living ecosystem and a primary material. The works included prompt us to consider how nature, the countryside, the earth—however these may be understood, whether as cultural constructs, as palimpsest, as terrestrial ecosystems, as lived experience, or as place—are moulded and shaped in multiple ways: through hands, thought, imagination, storytelling, technology, practices of domination and exploitation, as well as through the symbiosis of human and non-human, animate and inanimate beings. Within this framework and in relation to the broader historical moment of climatic, institutional and geopolitical crisis we are traversing, “agropoetics” functions both as a cohesive conceptual axis and as an invitation to a progressive shift in our gaze and, by extension, in our perception —from the landscape, to the land, to the soil— so that we may find ourselves looking at the world from a different position, one that is less anthropocentric and more empathetic, subversive, even poetic.The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring contributions by more than thirty writers from the fields of literature, poetry, and the social sciences, who reflect on the work of the participating artists.

Curated by Dr Elena Parpa