Women in Art Across Centuries, an international museum-level exhibition bringing together works by 17 women artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, opened on Thursday, 17 September 2026, at XeniArtSpace at Trilogy Plaza in Limassol. The exhibition was officially opened by the Minister of Transport, Communications and Works, Evi Tsolaki, in the presence of guests from the worlds of art, culture and the media.
The exhibition brings together works from the personal collection of Xenia Kulbachevskaya, collector and founder of XeniArtSpace. Historically significant figures are placed in dialogue with established and emerging voices from the contemporary art scene: Olga de Amaral, Tracey Emin, Leonor Fini, Lidia Masterkova, Leiko Ikemura, Lynne Drexler, Sabine Moritz, Hayv Kahraman, Inka Essenhigh, Teresa Solar Abboud, Emily Kraus, Élise Peroi, Jess Allen, Georg Wilson, Pia Krajewski, Maro Gorky and Konstantina Krikzoni. Seventeen distinct artistic journeys, spanning different generations and cultural backgrounds, come together in a polyphonic presentation that preserves and highlights the individual identity of each artist.
Information on the biographies and works of the 17 artists HERE.
Journeys Across Two Centuries
Painting, photography, textile art, sculpture and installation come together to create a broad field of artistic expression. Works from the 20th century are placed alongside contemporary practices, not through a linear narrative of art history, but through connections that reveal how ideas, experiences and artistic explorations move across time and acquire new meanings.
The exhibition does not seek to define the female experience, nor does it attempt to identify a common "female aesthetic". The artists come from different countries, cultures and artistic traditions and do not belong to a single aesthetic framework. Their works are brought together precisely to highlight this diversity and the multiplicity of independent artistic voices, while preserving the distinct differences between them.
CHANNELLED: When Experience Becomes Art
The title CHANNELLED refers to the idea of the artist as a conduit through which personal experience, memory, intuition, inner states and energy take visual and material form.
The intimate becomes visible, while the intangible acquires substance. What emerges from the artist's inner world passes into the work and encounters the viewer's gaze, leaving space for individual interpretation.
Xenia Kulbachevskaya Turns a Collection into a Narrative
The starting point for CHANNELLED: Women in Art Across Centuries was the personal collection of Xenia Kulbachevskaya, collector, founder of XeniArtSpace and curator of the exhibition, with Maria Stocker (née Korolevskaya) serving as co-curator.
Speaking about the development of the collection and what led to the creation of the exhibition, Xenia Kulbachevskaya said:
"My personal collection took shape gradually, through my relationship with art and with works that, for different reasons, moved me and stayed in my memory. They were not acquired with the intention of one day being shown together. Over the years, however, I began to notice connections between them and a shared pulse. It was this unexpected dialogue between the works that led me to the idea for the exhibition.
Presenting them together in Cyprus is particularly meaningful to me. It gives the public an opportunity to encounter works from different generations and artistic worlds and, at the same time, to form their own relationship with them.
I hope every visitor leaves having taken something personal with them - an image, a feeling or a thought. Art speaks differently to each of us, and perhaps that is precisely where its enduring power lies".
The Minister of Transport, Communications and Works, Evi Tsolaki, said:
"I am particularly pleased to open this important exhibition tonight, as it marks another pioneering cultural initiative, bringing together in Cyprus works by distinguished women artists from Europe, Asia and the Americas.
I am opening this exhibition as a member of a government that has tangibly supported the arts and is firmly committed to continuing this support in a constructive and empowering way. I am also honoured to do so as a woman and as someone who has served Limassol's cultural scene at the municipal level for many years.
That is precisely why I can only applaud the work carried out by XeniArtSpace and the museum-level exhibitions it has organised since it was founded nearly two years ago".
XeniArtSpace Connects Cyprus with the International Art Scene
CHANNELLED: Women in Art Across Centuries joins a series of significant exhibitions presented by XeniArtSpace, through which audiences in Cyprus have had the opportunity to encounter works by acclaimed artists represented in major museum collections around the world.
Operating as a gallery while developing its programme as a private art institution, XeniArtSpace seeks to broaden public engagement with international art, bring different periods and artistic approaches into dialogue, and reveal new connections between history and the present.
CHANNELLED: Women in Art Across Centuries is accompanied by the parallel exhibition CHANNELLED: CYPRUS - Women Artists of the Island, dedicated to women artists connected to Cyprus, which opens to the public on 22 September 2026.
Together, the two exhibitions connect the international and Cypriot art scenes, creating a wider cultural dialogue and strengthening Cyprus's presence within the international artistic landscape.
