Contested Desires at Xarkis

📍Xarkis Festival | 📆 11–13 September 2026 | 📍Kalavasos, Cyprus | Free entry 

This September, artists from Cyprus, Europe, Africa, South America and the North of England gathered for the final international residency of Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues.

Hosted as part of the Xarkis Festival in Kalavasos, Cyprus, the residency marks the culmination of a three-year programme exploring how colonial histories continue to shape contemporary society, culture and identity.

For D6:EU, the residency represents much more than an opportunity to showcase work internationally. It is a chance for artists rooted in Cyprus to exchange ideas across borders, deepen their practice, build new partnerships and bring fresh perspectives back to the island

Starting the Conversation in Larnaca

As part of the Contested Desires artist-in-residence programme hosted by D6:EU and Larnaka2030, the journey began with artist Sithabile Mlotshwa, who presented ‘What Has Cyprus Got to Do with Colonialism?’, an introductory presentation marking the starting point of a major three-part research-based project, Threads of Displacement: From Cyprus to Global Colonial Legacies.

 Brought to life at the Common Ground Gallery in Larnaca, the project explores the colonisation of Cyprus and its connections to European and global colonial histories, setting the tone for the enquiry that would carry through the whole programme.

Alongside Sithabile, Tunisian artist Mohamed Ben Slama brought the folkloric legend of Boussadia to life at Common Ground Gallery Larnaca, through rhythm, ritual and powerful visual storytelling, in an evening enriched by special collaborative performances.

“Boussadia” explores identity, memory and colonial legacies in a contemporary Mediterranean context, a visceral blend of movement and sound that reimagines heritage through a decolonial lens.

D6:EU’s Artists on the World Stage

D6:EU is proud to have supported artists Sümer Erek and Emiddio Vasquez, both of whom were hosted in Cyprus as part of the Contested Desires programme before carrying their research further afield.

Sümer Erek, a multidisciplinary artist working between Cyprus and the UK, travelled to Ghana for the CDCD residency, with support from Nubuke Foundation. His practice spans installation, performance and participatory work rooted in personal histories of displacement, trauma and resilience. As a Turkish-speaking Cypriot, Sümer reflects on shifting colonial power and its imprint on collective memory. For CDCD, he researched the colonial movement of plants and how botany was used as a mechanism of power and extraction.

While in Ghana, Sümer led workshops exploring indigenous knowledge systems and developed site-specific work using pigments and dyes derived from non-native trees. At the CDCD seminar hosted at Nubuke Foundation, he presented Tears of Gold, a powerful new work reflecting on Ghana’s colonial history and exploitation as the Gold Coast. Guided by instinct and materials encountered during his research residency in Accra, Erek’s process became a personal journey through space, history and emotion exploring extraction, memory and inherited trauma, with special dedications to Wood Carvers, Kente Weavers, Basket and Pottery Makers.

Emiddio Vasquez spent a month at the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile, developing his ongoing lecture-performance Numismatics. The work treats coins as points of social contact carrying condensed histories, extending the research of Vasquez’s label Moneda. Through coins, Numismatics explores shifting meanings of value, tracing them to ideas of memory and protection, examining how money changes materially and ideologically, and how these transformations shape power structures and forms of resistance.

During the residency, Vasquez worked with the museum’s numismatic collection from the Pinochet dictatorship, where prisoners used smuggled coins to craft objects sent to family or circulated through solidarity networks, transforming economic value into vessels of perseverance and remembrance. His research also engaged with two further narratives: the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, explored through C.D. Palestino and the Patronato neighbourhood; and a found 16mm film documenting the Agrarian Reform (1965–73), when land was redistributed from latifundia to asentamientos. Together, numismatics, diaspora and land converge around questions of memory, placemaking and their entanglement with capital.

Kalavasos: Building Connections

For the final residency of the project, curated by Xarkis, all 22 artists involved in Contested Desires have gathered in the small village of Kalavasos, Cyprus, to meet a territory that is not just a backdrop, but an active participant in the research.

Artists are traversing the territory through the voices of former miners, local memorabilia, wheat weaving, herbs and silk cocoons, artisanal practices, and images of Cypriot women filmed over forty years ago.

It is not about fitting the narratives of a territory, but building a relationship with them based on listening, reciprocity and co-creation, while questioning the stories of extraction, appropriation and representation that have shaped our relationship with places and their resources.

New Perspectives on Colonial Legacies

At the centre of every meeting is the question that runs through the whole project: how can artistic practice generate new forms of dialogue around the stories, identities and desires that define a place?

From this process, new works and new perspectives will be born, converging in the Xarkis Festival 2026, the final chapter of Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues, taking place from 11–13 September in Kalavasos.

Bringing Learning Home to Cyprus

While Contested Desires has taken place across continents, its impact will continue to be felt here in Cyprus. The programme has enabled artists to develop ambitious new work, build international networks and gain experience presenting their practice in global contexts. Just as importantly, it has created opportunities for communities in Cyprus to connect with artists and perspectives from around the world, sharing and validating their own experiences.

By creating space for dialogue, collaboration and critical reflection, Contested Desires has revealed untold histories, amplified under-represented voices, and encouraged new ways of understanding the complex legacies that continue to shape our world today.