Kyriaki Costa

Within the framework of the Alternative Brains Rule Festival, the interdisciplinary artist Kyriaki Costa proposes an intervention titled Without detriment to, based on a long-standing engagement with the Municipal Gardens and ‘Phytorio’, the former plant nursery and since 2011, the home of the Visual Artists and Art Theorists Association (affectively named “phytorio”). Both sites were designed by the renowned architect of Cypriot Modernism, Neoptolemos Michailides.

Kyriaki Costa’s practice includes an ongoing series of works titled Head & Hand, which always begins by identifying neglected or broken corners within our urban fabric and restores them in collaboration with builders and artisans. This careful and gentle practice of tending and mending is preceded by a slow yet deliberate inquiry into how and where to intervene, as well as into the (im)material presences and resources on-site that are available for the renovation work to minimise resource use and waste.

The intervention inside the Municipal Gardens of Nicosia is the outcome of a series of stories still unfolding as you read this in June 2025. These events acted as impetus, inspiration and obstacle in the realisation of this intervention; a familiar dynamic to many cultural workers who often have to navigate uncertainty and adapt to circumstances that shift like quicksand. Such circumstances are disorientating and time-consuming; navigating bureaucratic and labyrinthine administration becomes psychologically and physically draining.

One would think that a state of duress leaves little time to think deeply about art, exhibition-making and culture, or about the parameters that determine who has access to making, seeing and speaking about art. Paradoxically, such circumstances force precisely these pertinent questions to surface about the aesthetics, politics and ethics in the creation of ideas. The parameters make themselves known as urgencies or constraints; they are imprinted on the ‘skin’ of creative practices and determine their flows and currents. The circumstances I am referring to intend to confuse, but instead they clarify what is necessary, even unavoidable, to address.

What becomes clear is how the increasing imbalance between administrative work, cultural work and civic engagement through activism, lobbying and advocacy reflect relationships that intertwine state, society and culture. When power becomes a barrier to the organic and winding flows of cultural work, it is only a symptom of many ailments and a socio-political landscape where support, respect or appreciation for contemporary culture-making is understood through a narrow frame of reference.




Without detriment to has been displaced from Phytorio, where it was planned to take place. Even after a prolonged effort to arrive at a resolution, with the power imbalances that communication with state authorities entails, the association has been denied access to the space by legal, sudden, and uncalled-for means by the Municipality of Nicosia. This framework opens up the opportunity to address the ongoing challenges of Phytorio as the seat of the association, and, as a material assemblage at risk of crumbling - literally, metaphorically and symbolically. Now dispersed, the works by Costa find refuge where plant forms have learnt to harvest and live on limited water sources — among the palm trees, the cacti and the sandy soils of the gardens Costa’s work serve as ‘kind reminders’ that undercurrents can, and do move freely and that fragmentation opens up space for metamorphosis.

Story I

Τhe space of Phytorio has been one such site of observation and restoration for Costa, as it has for many other artists and founding members who have fundraised and invested private funds to fix, maintain and run this space. The Municipality in 2010 generously granted the right to use the space in 2011 on the condition that they would not incur any additional expenses. However, any changes deemed necessary will have to be approved by the Municipality and reviewed by the Aesthetic Review Committee. Through private contributions and the continued efforts of its members, the nursery was repaired, maintained and inaugurated in 2011. Interventions have been as minimal and non-invasive as possible, always in conversation with artisans and architects who respect the status of this building as a heritage site and an architectural gem.

In 2015, within the framework of the Head & Hand series titled, Its water: Taps and sources of Nicosia, Costa had watering basins made for the stray and caged animals and birds of the Municipal Gardens. In 2019, as part of an exhibition project at Phytorio titled Climate Challenge, she proposed to the municipality to restore parts of the internal stone wall that was crumbling. Her proposal was not accepted, and the artist’s final intervention was to construct a temporary replica and make an embroidery featuring its patterns and colours. She also published a compilation of her unanswered letters to public and private bodies. Throughout the exhibition, readings and workshops were organised exploring repair and maintenance as a socially-engaged artistic practice. That year, Costa also requested the installation of a wheelchair lift to make Phytorio accessible for all.  

Innovative Flow Solutions, the title of the former project, ultimately aimed to highlight how administrative blockages prevent more attuned ways of tending to our urban commons, and how absurd yet vital the practice of explaining interdisciplinary projects to state bodies can be. Administrative language is an integral part of the Head & Hand series. The emails Costa wrote to try and bring this project to the fore can be read on the series of white fabrics hanging between the palm trees.

Recently, some of the large glass windows of Phytorio cracked, others were smashed during attempted break-ins, and a few others have become unstable with time. This rendered the building unsafe to use and placed the current status of the building and, by extension, the association’s ability to access and use the space, in limbo.

Costa’s proposal to ABR Festival intended to build on her Head & Hand series, this time focusing on the maintenance or, lack thereof, of the windows of Phytorio. Since 2023, the windows are a central topic of debate within phytorio’s team responsible for reparation works. Even though the team communicated with the Municipality of Nicosia and invited their appointed architects and contractors to conduct the proper studies, these studies were not followed up by maintenance works. At the same time, phytorio was notified that grand renovation works of the Municipal Gardens would start in 2024, within the framework of the Integrated Spatial Development of the Nicosia Urban Area Strategy and Action Plan 2021-2030. They have yet to begin. All in all, this space has remained closed not for lack of interest in activating it, but as a result of an administrative twilight zone which made it impossible to plan for the future. A misunderstanding on the 4th of June with the Municipality while we were preparing for Kyriaki’s exhibition was followed by an excessive use of power that prohibited us from accessing what had been for more than ten years our association’s centre.   

On the occasion of turning her attention to the plant nursery’s glass windows, Costa considered her collection of glass fragments, which she had been collecting from the grounds of the Municipal Garden and the Pedieos River bordering the park. These pieces were gathered to be recycled and introduced into her practice later on. Only when the process of recycling began did the artist gain insight into the distorted narrative surrounding the sustainability of this process. Since there are no glass recycling facilities in Cyprus, glass has to be shipped to Turkey via Egypt. The fragments return to the ground within the cactus garden. The glass surfaces, reminiscent of water bodies, reflect, diffract, distort and absorb the light. Unusual colour streaks and opaqueness appear as leakages, or spillages of toxic matter, while translucent surfaces make the mouth thirsty. These ponds received the care and attention that the windows of Phytorio did not. We - the artist and I, as cultural workers and as members of the board of phytorio, are aware that the notions of transparency and grades of opacity this work brings up, include and extend beyond the illusion of liquid matter, beyond water cycles, beyond cycles of drought and flood, and arrive to the discussion of what healthy democratic frameworks look and feel like.

Story II

In dialogue with the glass pieces, another kind of archive, equally embedded in the fabric of phytorio (the association) and Phytorio (the space), surfaces prominently among the palm trees: formal letters and emails. The chain of curtains installed behind Phytorio rises to five metres in height - an absurd, yet I would argue, appropriate gesture to convey the headspace and energy that lobbying, explaining and justifying through letters, emails and online communication are required in cultural activism. Recent developments - or underdevelopments - of cultural workers’ status and rights leave engaged cultural workers with no choice but to become versed in the lexicon and modes of communication of the state. Writing formal letters is a staple practice for the association of phytorio. After all, our scope is to argue in favour of artists’ rights and wellbeing and contribute to efforts of improving state mechanisms and legislations that directly affect us, our livelihoods and our capacity to create.

Undoubtedly, it is also a necessary tool within artistic production, seeing as everything now revolves around the exchange of emails. Yet, I would like to acknowledge that I find myself as many others, writing emails or letters on an increasingly frequent basis at the detriment of our cultural practice. Significant time is spent on bureaucratic meanderings. So much so that I would argue (only half-jokingly) that it has become an artistic practice in and of itself, to be and to sound diplomatic so that you, your association, your collective, your initiative,  your organisation can continue to create and exist. The installation features anonymised communication exchanged with the municipality, donors and organisations, except for excerpts that relate explicitly to Costa’s artworks.

* Without detriment to is a legal term that ensures one party will not enter into any agreements or actions that could harm, negatively impact, or disadvantage the other party.

With thanks to: ABR Festival staff and assistants, members and board of phytorio, Edison, Artemis Theodorou