The last week of June welcomes a new art exhibition, bringing together 16 emerging and established contemporary artists across Cyprus and abroad. Opening on Friday, June 26 at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC), the A Slight Indisposition explores notions of transformation as a site for negotiation or reconciliation between sentience, sapience and space, and features a rich parallel events programme.

The exhibition takes its title and conceptual framework from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), widely regarded as one of the most significant literary works of the 20th century. A Slight Indisposition reflects on transformation as both a disturbance of certainty and a fundamental condition of existence. The phrase operates as a euphemism for the dissonance at the heart of Kafka’s narrative, where irreversible change is met with eerie calm and muted distress.

The selected artworks present metamorphosis not only as rupture, but also as a condition of being and becoming, tracing the malleability of memory, shifting perceptions of time and distance, and cycles of decay, loss and rebirth across personal, ecological and geographical histories.

Drawing on key texts in mythology, ecology, the philosophy of becoming, and theories of psychological transformation that understand life as a continuous process rather than a succession of fixed identities. A slight indisposition reflects on how bodies, memories, environments and social and cultural realities are continually reshaped through their relations with one another.

Through large and small-scale audiovisual works, material and immaterial installations, performative actions, photographic series, paintings, drawings and works on paper, the exhibition stages shared anxieties and states of alienation against collective acts of wishing, the alchemical potential of change, dreamlike encounters, somatic experience and the dissolution of binary structures.

Showcasing their work are artists Toya Akpınar, Hasan Aksaygın, Fauve Alice, Emir Anday, Nikolas Antoniou, Banu Cennetoğlu, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Emin Çizenel, Haris Epaminonda, Sümer Erek, Julie Gauthron, Stelios Kallinikou, Burak Kibar Zafer, Erol Kutay, Loreal Prystaj and Umay Yılmaz.

The exhibition’s parallel events programme starts on the opening night with the performance The Offspring by Umay Yilmaz at 7pm. another performance will follow at 8pm, as Hasan Aksaygın presents Hallowing the Limax Dei.

A performance and discussion titled Grab a Pile of Dust by Sümer Erek will continue the programme at July 9, followed by two artist talks on July 2 and 9. Guided tours will take place on July 16 in English at 6pm by Dr Esra Plümer Bardak, on July 18 at 10am in Greek by Ioanna Chrysovitsioti and at 11.30am on the same day, in Turkish.

A Slight Indisposition

Group art exhibition. June 26-July 26. Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC), Nicosia. Opening night: 7pm. Wednesday – Saturday: 10am – 8pm. Sunday: 10am – 6pm. Tel: 22-797400. www.nimac.org.cy