Presented in the framework of the Art Explora Festival and Limassol Art Walks.
In recent years, a combination of geopolitical shifts and state policies has brought a surge of foreign investments, businesses, and residents to Cyprus, with Limassol arguably at the centre of these developments. As a result, the city has undergone unprecedented urban change, triggering rapid gentrification and a prolonged housing and living crisis. While dominant discourse celebrates an exciting new future for Limassol, many long-term residents, particularly members of vulnerable communities and disadvantaged socioeconomic groups, face displacement and financial instability due to skyrocketing rents and living costs. They grapple with the radical transformation of their neighbourhoods, the dismantling of social bonds, and the urgent need to renegotiate identity and belonging. Limassol’s art scene has also been deeply affected, as insufficient state and institutional support has put artists in a precarious position, with many having already left the city or witnessing their communities fragment.
The Right to Home bears witness to the struggles of staying, resisting, and imagining the future in Limassol amid rapid urban development and gentrification. Focusing on voices among the city’s local creative community and bringing together over twenty artists, academics, activists, journalists, and social practitioners, the programme unfolds around a group exhibition that serves as the stage for screenings, performances, concerts, open discussions, workshops, podcasts, and publications. Hosted at EKA Group’s landmark garage and the Synergeio Performing Arts Centre, the project bridges Limassol’s contemporary cultural scene with its artistic and industrial legacies.
Contributions range from personal testimonies to critical dialogue, addressing issues of precariousness and survival, displacement and belonging, resignation and resilience, and positioning Limassol both as a local case-study and as a node within global conversations on violent urban change. Together, participants trace Limassol’s layered histories, document a present marked by loss yet sustained by community, and attempt to envision more just and sustainable futures in the place they call home but can no longer live in—making The Right to Home a collective diary and living archive of a city, and its people, in transformation.
Photos by Dimitris Loutsios, Nicolas Karatzas and myself.
