Inaugural Lectures
Dr Tselika & Dr Vergara

Visual Voices (CY) presents the Kartzin Colloquium 2026, a curated program of lectures, artist talks, workshops, and reading groups dedicated to socially engaged art and its role in advancing freedom of expression in Cyprus.
At a moment when artistic expression is increasingly tested by political pressure, and institutional caution the Kartzin Colloquium brings together artists, academics, cultural practitioners, and the public to explore how art can cultivate agonistic pluralism, redistribute agency and prototype new ways of living together across differences. Curated by Melina Philippou, architect and urbanist and Selin Genç, art historian and anthropologist, the Colloquium is grounded in critical debates on participation, authorship, ethics of encounter and public space. It aims to safeguard artistic freedom, support a growing community of socially engaged art practitioners in Cyprus and invite wider publics into the questions, methods, and possibilities of the field. The inaugural event is organised in collaboration with the University of Nicosia-UNIC and the Celadon Center for Arts and Ecologies, problematising artistic practice and academic debates across Cyprus and Brazil. Dr Evanthia (Evi) Tselika, Associate Professor, UNIC, Cyprus, will present “From audience participation to workshop and assembly aesthetics in Cypriot art of the twenty-first century”. The lecture will reflect on key facets and evolutionary aspects of Cypriot socially engaged art practices over the last twenty years, with a particular focus on notions of learning, commoning, ethics and political imagination. Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara, Associate Professor, Federal Fluminense University – FFU, Brazil, is presenting “Art - Agency and Placefulness: A Brazilian Approach to a Utopian Pragmatism” . His lecture will foreground site-specific curatorial practices shaped by Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói and its dialogue with the Guanabara Bay eco-social landscape in Rio de Janeiro. The two lectures will be followed by responses from Dr. Gavriel Koureas, art historian and Co-Director of the Celadon Center for Arts and Ecologies, and Constantinos Taliotis, artist and Assistant Professor at UNIC. The Colloquium takes place as part of the wider programming of the Kartzin Socially Engaged Arts (SEA) Lab, a Visual Voices initiative funded by the Commonwealth Foundation. The public will be able to engage with the Kartzin SEA Lab through an upcoming series of exhibitions and the Art Informed Policy Forum addressing freedom of expression, access, and pluralism in the arts. Updates and announcements are published on social media as well as through a mailing list dedicated to the socially engaged arts.