Highlights From Cyprus’ Emerging International Art Fair

The second edition of Vima built on the momentum of the successful inaugural art fair in 2025, with more visitors (5,200) and increased sales from last year (sold artworks ranged from €550 to €90,000). The art fair, which opened last week in Limassol, Cyprus (May 15-17, 2026), featured 26 invited local and international galleries, presenting over 150 artists from more than 20 countries. The Cyprus contemporary art scene is definitely growing, judging from the buzz among the collectors, curators, galleries and artists at this year’s edition.

Vima comes from the Greek word “βήμα” (víma), meaning “step” and also “platform” or “podium,” reflecting the fair’s concept as a platform for contemporary art and cultural exchange, positioning Cyprus as a meeting point for artists and galleries across the Mediterranean. And the invitation-only fair does just that, bringing together a carefully selected group of galleries, either based in the region or with regional connections.

The gallery booths chosen by an expert committee, are complemented by a program of 25 events including talks, live music and performances. A parallel highlight was “The Crashing Waves,” a special exhibition curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos (ex Serpentine Gallery London), while a series of off-site shows and events offered plenty to see across Limassol and into Nicosia in the north of the island. Here are 11 highlights from the fair as well as some ongoing art exhibitions in Limassol and Nicosia.

1.The Crashing Waves

A vast courtyard among the warehouses that house Vima hosted a wonderful special group exhibition. Artists including Stelios Kallinikou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Christos Kyriakides, Serapis Maritime and Paky Vlassopoulou showed work of moving image, sound, text and performance. Curator Kostas Stasinopoulos used the wave as both an idea and a structure for thinking about time, communication, and shared experience. In this framework, meaning is not immediate but unfolds gradually, arriving through echoes, returns, and interruptions.

It’s also here that the live events were shown on a large stage surrounded by an installation “Mother Trade 3(I Love My Boat)” by Serapis Maritime made from tightly packed bales of second-hand clothing, fishing ropes and materials gathered from Limassol’s waterfront. The fabric bundles, marked with imagery from local shipyards, linking the work to the city’s maritime economy also doubled as makeshift seating. A dramatic opening performance “Caught” by Magnus Westwell, a Scottish choreographer and dancer, involved overlapping, phased cycles of sound and movement, including some impressive acrobatics, creating a layered reflection on time, loss, and fragmentation.

2.Cut Art Gallery, Riga

Azerbaijani painter Ramina Saadatkhan’s bold, colorful works at the Cut Art gallery stand blend human, animal and natural forms into interconnected, shifting figures. Rather than telling fixed stories, her art explores identity as something fluid, shaped by instinct, memory and transformation. She builds each piece from original compositions, layering color and detail to create depth and emotional impact, drawing on influences from both the Caucasus and the Mediterranean.

3.Eins Gallery, Limassol

Established in 2018, Eins gallery plays a pivotal role in shaping art discourse and supporting contemporary artists across the Cypriot art scene. Founded by director Tasos Stylianou and his brother Constantinos Stylianou, the gallery continues to foster emerging and established practices. At Vima, eins presented works by Eleni Odysseos, Raissa Angeli, and Stelios Kallinikou. At the gallery in Limassol, a solo show “A Disappearing Act, an Erroneous Camouflaging” by Leontios Toumpouris, featuring sculpture and photography runs until 27 June 2026.

4.Sylvia Kouvali, Piraeus and London

Prominent Greek gallerist Sylvia Kouvali shows mid-career and established artists from the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa. Seven artists wer shown including painter Apostolos Georgiou, and sculptor Koula Savvidou, whose hybrid sculptural figures made from plaster, metal, wood, and found materials, tend to read as fragmented, mythic bodies—somewhere between human, animal, and archetypal form.

5.The Edit Gallery, Limassol

The Edit Gallery shows both Cypriot and international artists and featured eight artists at Vima: Elena Adamou, Johannes Holt Iversen, Stella Kapezanou, Mariandrie, Danae Patsalou, Lefki Savvidou and Yeti, spanning painting, embroidery, textile installation, ceramics and mixed-media wall pieces. Currently on at the gallery in town until 6 June 2026 is a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture, “The Greatest Nation Ever” from a former street artist Yeti, who studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

6.Kalfayan, Athens

Kalfayan presented a group show of 11 artists reflecting the gallery’s broad focus on dialogue between Greek, Balkan, and Eastern Mediterranean practices, combining historical and contemporary positions across painting, sculpture and mixed-media approaches.

7.Öktem Aykut, Istanbul

Öktem Aykut represents a roster of established and emerging Turkish and international artists. For Vima, they showed works of Turkish artist Mert Öztekin and Swiss Turkish painter Renée Levi, well known for her gestural, abstract paintings.

8.The Gallery 45, Limassol

American painter Alex Charriol and Iranian artist Hanie Soltani were two standout painters at The Gallery 45 (Limassol) booth. Hanie Soltani is a Tehran-based figurative painter whose practice explores themes of identity, memory and the human condition through a personal and emotionally driven perspective. Her paintings reflect the intersection between contemporary Iranian culture and wider global concerns, using intimate imagery to express complex psychological and emotional states.

9.The Window Project, Tbilisi

An intriguing solo exhibition by Georgian artist Ani Toidze at The Window Project stand extended her ongoing practice featuring large-scale works on paper and canvas that create luminous, open compositions where figures and objects appear weightless and suspended.

10.Stand in Line, Nicosia

It was great to see paintings by the famous Cypriot artist Tilemachos Kanthos (1910–1993) from Nicosia gallery Stand in Line. The gallery cleverly positioned him as a historical anchor for Cypriot modernism contrasting his landscapes with contemporary Cypriot artists in the same booth.

11.Citronne Gallery, Athens/Poros

Another exceptional presentation contrasting veteran and younger artists included five Greek artists: Yiannis Adamakos, Stephen Antonakos, Pantelis Chandris, Aphrodite Liti and Myrto Xanthopoulou, on show at Citronne Gallery. Aphrodite Liti’s delicate “maple leaf” sculpture was a standout piece.

New Aquisitions And Artists’ Grants

Keen to promote regional artists and give them greater exposure, Vima Art Fair launched a public acquisition program this year, a new initiative supporting the purchase of contemporary artworks for public collections in Limassol and across Cyprus. The first acquisitions, donated by Island Oil to the Limassol Municipal Collection, include prints by Stelios Kallinikou, a bronze by Maria Toumazou and a painting by Damianos Zisimou.

Also new to the fair this year was an Audience Choice Grant of €3,000 by Mellow where visitors voted for three of their favorite artists. The winners were: Azerbaijani artist Ramina Saadathan, Cut Art (Riga); Iranian artist Hanie Soltani from The Gallery 45 (Limassol) and Georgian artist Ani Toidze. The Window Project (Tbilisi).

External exhibitions – on through summer 2026

Bill Viola, “Unspoken” at PSI Foundation, Limassol until August 1, 2026

PSI Foundation, a non-profit contemporary art organisation based in Limassol, has a stunning show by American video art pioneer Bill Viola, in a vast warehouse beside the Vima site. The exhibition this summer brings together key pieces from across his career including “The Greeting”(1995), “Three Women” (2008), “The Dreamers” (2013) and “Martyrs” (2014). Bill Viola was a leading figure in video art, known for his slow, contemplative style and interest in life, death and transformation, often drawing on Buddhist thought and elemental imagery.

Pylon Art & Culture, Limassol

Pylon Art & Culture is showing “Interior” by Phanos Kyriakou until 27 June, which features a series of intriguing sculptural works made of found materials including wood, metal, rubber, glass, and industrial fragments.

Xeni Artspace, Limassol

Xeni Artspace is a brilliant new art gallery, free to visit, spread over several floors in two imposing modern skyscrapers. The ground floor shows works from the personal collection of the founder, Xenia Kulbachevskaya and features painting and sculpture by contemporary artists from Cyprus as well as major international artists including like Anish Kapoor and Studio Drift. These are on permanent display and open for public viewing. Upstairs in the same building, there is a temporary photography exhibition, “Women in Focus,” on until 19 September 2026, on loan from photographer and collector Vadim Levin, with photographs by Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn and others. The other space across the courtyard is the main space for temporary exhibitions, where there’s currently a large piece by Anselm Kiefer (the only work by the German artist in Cyprus) alongside paintings by emerging Cypriot artists.

Christoforos Savva, “Simple, Complicated, Invisible: An Unknown Archive,” A. G. Leventis Gallery, Nicosia – until 28 June 2026

Christoforos Savva is regarded as a pivotal figure in modern Cypriot art, notably the first artist from Cyprus to exhibit at the Venice Biennale and to open a contemporary art gallery in the country. The exhibition at A.G. Leventis presents works, sketches, studies, photographs, and personal notes spanning 1924–1968.

“Agropoetics: Soils/Bodies,” Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Nicosia – until 30 June 2026

Part of the Cultural Program of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026, this fascinating group exhibition brings together around over 50 Cypriot artists across generations. The show over several floors, explores the notion of landscape in connection with nature, countryside, land, place and soil.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com