FLUID PERSISTENCE

An exhibition exploring water's vital yet unpredictable nature - its role in ecology, myth, geopolitics, and transformation.

“As a vital yet unpredictable and volatile element, water is a restless force that nourishes ecosystems, defines (is)lands, forms landscapes, and moves through bodies—human and non-human—while simultaneously resisting systematic attempts at control in an era of rapid development and climate instability. Fluid Persistence brings together nineteen contemporary artists whose work draws from urgent questions about ecological destruction, water’s place in storytelling and mythmaking, its defining power in geopolitics, its dark and haunting nature, and its magical and transformative potential, ingrained in the single fact that we are bodies of water.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“

Curator: Dr Elena Stylianou

With his work titled Les sondes sont exprimées en mètres, Charalambos Artemis intervenes in archives of imperial cartography by pairing maritime maps bearing the weight of countless colonial measurements with triangular photographic fragments salvaged from tourist slides—leisure travelers innocently sailing the same waters a century later. This juxtaposition reveals uncomfortable continuities between cartography and photography as technologies of colonial expansion, both performing parallel acts of extraction and possession. The work’s chaotic arrangement renders the map itself unreadable, enacting what Glissant describes as an opacity that “resists interpretation through colonial frameworks of comprehension.” Rather than offering transparency or restoration to wholeness, the suspended fragments suggest new configurations emerging from fracture itself, asserting water’s fundamental right to resist the claims made upon it.

Artists: Elena Adamou, Alev Adil, Ioannis Aristotelous, Charalambos Artemis, Marianna Christofides, Kyriaki Costa, Pavlos Ioannides, Stelios Kallinikou, Nurtane Karagil, Marina Kassianidou, Nicolas Lambouris, Maria Loizidou, Eleni Mouzourou, PASHIAS, Alexandros Pissourios, Mikella Psara, Socratis Socratous, Constantinos Taliotis, Damianos Zisimou