Programme

The history of the Taksim cinema, later renamed Apollon, until its destruction by fire in May 2024, is brought to life through the personal testimonies of past and present residents of the neighborhood. The event activates the very space of the cinema through a sound documentary, cooking, and music. In addition, on the morning of the same day, the guided sound walk “Stories from Limassol’s mahalla” will take place, featuring narratives about the area’s social life before 1974.

Walid Ben Selim gives voice to great Sufi poets, seeking primal vibration through an epic, meditative breath. With harpist Marie-Marguerite Cano, he creates a space of musical spirituality, where Arabic spoken word meets the harp’s symbolic language. A poetic territory imbued with love and triumphant joy.

The Right to Home bears witness to the struggles of staying, resisting, and imagining the future in Limassol amid rapid urban change and gentrification. Centring voices within the local community and bringing together over twenty artists, academics, and social practitioners, the project unfolds around a group exhibition that serves as the stage for screenings, performances, concerts, open discussions, workshops, podcasts, and publications.

A journey through the city exploring the impact of gentrification on the lives and memories of its living beings, using exercises, games, guided narration, and writing.

A screening programme featuring new works by Phivos Philitas, Adonis Archontides and Androula Kafa, created for the exhibition The Right to Home: Diaries of Limassol’s Gentrification.

A participatory poetry session hosted by artist Aggela Ioannidou, exploring how the transformation of cities affects individuals and their communities through the work of award-winning author Donna Stonecipher. Guests are invited to engage as much or as little as they wish by listening, reading, and sharing thoughts and experiences.

1953, a dramaturgical exercise on the facticity of the present, reimagines the Rialto Theatre as a fluid space dissolving borders between stage and auditorium, inside and outside, day and night. Structured in three parts and lasting fifteen hours, from sunset to sunrise, it unfolds as a shifting landscape where the dramatised and the real intermingle. Its coordinates are set by the lives of scenographer Valentino Joseph and Julie the elephant, both born in 1953.

Open Studio presentations by Tamara Al-Samerraei and Ghyzlène Boukaïla, artists-in-residence at Art Explora’s Mediterranean Crossed Residency programme in Cyprus. Al-Samerraei presents new paintings exploring memory, absence, and precarious spaces, inspired by makeshift studios and abandoned huts that echo a childhood home. Boukaïla presents a mixed-media installation linked to her lecture-performance Djebel al-Qāf — is it reachable?, on view 31 Oct–2 Nov.

Bringing together sketches made in bed just before sleep, technical notes and sculptures maquettes that were never materialized, as well as a series of portrait studies culminating in a single painting, Pylon Art & Culture hosts the first solo exhibition of Valentino Joseph, seeking to shed light on another side of his multifaceted body of work. Opening on the second day of the Limassol Art Walks, the exhibition unfolds as both an epilogue and an autonomous continuation of the performance 1953 at the Rialto Theatre.

On November 1st and 2nd 2025, we invite you to Limassol’s old cemetery for a guided walk through its silence(d) grounds. Blending academic research with stories from those who sustain the cemetery, along with comparative material from our research in Greece, Denmark and Japan, we explore class-based, gendered and political necrogeographies. A reflective journey through social change, memory and care.

A walk through the exhibition The Right to Home: Diaries of Limassol’s Gentrification together with the artists and curator, exchanging insights and reflections on the works and themes of the project.

A screening programme featuring new works by Phivos Philitas, Adonis Archontides and Androula Kafa, created for the exhibition The Right to Home: Diaries of Limassol’s Gentrification.

An open space for sharing and reflection, this conversation explores the impacts of gentrification on some of Limassol’s long-time residents and communities, as well as its cultural ecosystem. Local artists join academics, activists and social practitioners to exchange daily experiences and critical perspectives on the city’s ongoing transformation, while the public is invited to contribute their own views and stories.

A live concert of hip-hop, rock, and electronic music showcasing the talents of Limassol's underground scene. Held in the iconic EKA Group garage, the concert will be followed by an afterparty at the Tapper Bar.

This year marks a special milestone for the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) performers' community in Cyprus as they bring their much-loved talent show “Your Face Sounds Familiar” to a wider audience. For the very first time, within the framework of Art Explora Festival the event will be held in an outdoor public space, opening itself to the broader community and celebrating the creativity and spirit of the Filipino diaspora.