The Larnaca Biennale team announces its thematic focus for the fifth edition in 2027. The theme ‘Metatopies: Geographies in Motion’ was conceived by its curators, Niki Papaspirou and Marios Fournaris, and invites artists to develop and submit works which draw inspiration from the concept of shifting as shaped through geological, anthropological, social, political, and historical conditions.
Artists will be able to submit their proposals through the Larnaca Biennale website from June 1, 2026, until March 31, 2027. Applications will be evaluated by the members of International Jury committee members of Larnaca Biennale 2027, whose names will be announced in the coming months.
During the Biennale, alongside the main exhibition, a range of parallel cultural events will also take place, including theatre performances, music and dance shows, educational programmes, lectures and artistic workshops across the Larnaca district. The corresponding call for proposals for these parallel events will also be available on the organisation’s website from July 1, 2026, until October 31, 2026.
Theme: Metatopies: Geographies in Motion
“The world has never existed as a fixed system,” say curators Papaspirou and Fournaris regarding the 2027 Biennale, “it has been shaped geologically, anthropologically, socially, politically and historically through continuous shifts: movements of bodies, populations, meanings, territories and boundaries.
“Today, the conditions that regulate the mobility of people and populations are being reconfigured,” they add, “affecting experiences of space and habitation, while at the same time, the human-driven climate crisis challenges established notions of sovereignty and highlights the need to reconsider our relationship to the land and with the concept of belonging.”
The curators further note that: “The exhibition Metatopies: Geographies in Motion approaches place not as a fixed point on a map, but as an event, a constellation of relations, flows and traces that exist in a state of constant transformation. Shifting concerns not only the movement of populations or the reconfiguration of boundaries, but also extends to regimes of mobility and immobility, infrastructures and passages, memory and trauma, as well as ecological changes that already reshape the everyday experience of inhabiting space.
“The exhibition proposes an alternative mapping process, a process of critical remapping, where the external geographies of space meet the internal geographies of the body, desire and belonging.
“Within this framework,” the curators underline, “part of artistic research can be viewed as a contemporary experience of the situationist concepts of dérive and détournement, generating related practical methods for recording and experiencing space as a dynamic field for reconsidering reality and shifting it against the backdrop of a collective imagination.”
Concluding, the curators emphasise that: “in a world undergoing change with growing intensity and speed, the notion of ‘Metatopies’ is revisited through contemporary art as a site of dialogue between different places, temporalities, and ways of experiencing the world”.
The fifth edition of the Larnaca Biennale will run from October 13th to November 26th, 2027
To learn more about the LB5 open call and submission rules, please visit: www.biennalelarnaca.com
For further information, interview requests or high-resolution images, please contact the organisation’s Press Office: [email protected] or by phone at +357 99 403 010
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