Words by Caidance Alton
“Energy is everything – and art is its best conduit.” For Xenia Kulbachevskaya, founder of XeniArtSpace in Limassol, Cyprus, this idea offers a way into CHANNELLED: Women in Art Across Centuries, an exhibition bringing together women artists whose work gives shape to inner worlds we cannot always see.
On view until 1 March 2027, CHANNELLED unfolds across XeniArtSpace’s two galleries. Space 2 presents 17 internationally recognised artists including Leonor Fini, Tracey Emin, Lynne Drexler, Olga de Amaral and Sabine Moritz. This exhibition curation is led by Xenia, with Maria Stocker of The Art Partners as co-curator. Meanwhile Space 1 offers a companion exhibition of 11 women artists connected to Cyprus. Together, the two shows make a generous proposition: art can connect personal experience, cultural memory and spiritual inquiry, while opening a conversation between the island’s own creative community and the wider art world. The result has an unmistakable local resonance.
The title encapsulates the exhibition’s central idea. Kulbachevskaya suggests that each artist is a channel: a distinct sensibility through which thoughts, feelings, memories and energy become visible. CHANNELLED gives space to many versions of womanhood, with artists from different generations, cultures and practices that are strikingly individual. The show’s interest lies in what happens when those voices occupy the same space – when resonances emerge, and when differences remain productively unresolved. “I did not want to suggest that there is only one female experience or one common female style,” Kulbachevskaya explains. “Every artist in CHANNELLED is a strong individual, with her own view of the world and her own artistic language.”
That range gives the exhibition its charge. Leonor Fini’s surrealist visions of female identity sit within a wider conversation that also includes Tracey Emin’s raw, personal photography and the work of Drexler, de Amaral and Moritz. Across the two spaces, mythology, memory, the body and the natural world offer routes into the questions the artists are asking. The premise also reaches beyond biography or medium. Across different spiritual legacies and materials, the works ask how an artist might translate consciousness into something encountered by others: an image, an object, a gesture. The result invites visitors to look beyond familiar categories and consider how art can make private thought feel unexpectedly shared.
The exhibition also speaks to XeniArtSpace’s purpose. Kulbachevskaya moved to Cyprus eight years ago and found herself missing a space for more contemporary art. “Now I have the opportunity to share this art with people, and that makes me very happy,” she says. Her ambition is to provide access for local audiences and to bring outstanding artists to an island where they may not have been shown before. Indeed, for some of the artists in CHANNELLED, this is their first presentation in Cyprus, creating a meaningful encounter in a country whose cultural landscape is deeply rooted in ancient art and heritage, and whose contemporary scene continues to grow.
XeniArtSpace grew from Kulbachevskaya’s own collection. Before opening the gallery, she studied at the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, trained as a fine artist and worked in interior design, selecting art for projects while building a collection of her own. The collection grew across movements including Russian Art Nouveau, Impressionism, European Expressionism and the Nabis. She acquired the works at different times and for different reasons; their unexpected relationships became clear only when she looked at them together and heard the murmurings of artist dialogue between them.
That realisation – and a general passion for the arts – solidified as a public institution. XeniArtSpace opened its first gallery in 2024, then expanded to a second space in 2025. The opening was inaugurated by Cyprus’ First Lady, Philippa Karsera. It was the first gallery in Cyprus to present an original work by Anselm Kiefer (for which an entire wall had to be removed to fit the canvas in!). In 2026, it premiered a documentary about 20th-century artist Tamara de Lempicka. These milestones reflect a foundation intent on making ambitious art available year-round and bringing international culture to local audiences.
The work of building a platform for Cypriot-based talent is just as visible in Space 1. Alongside companion shows, XeniArtSpace runs EGGspression, an annual project in which artists across Cyprus each transform an identical ceramic egg. The resulting works are as varied as their makers, and all proceeds go to charity. This emphasis on participation gives the foundation’s international programme a rooted counterpart: local artists are actively involved in the cultural conversation the gallery is creating.
CHANNELLED brings a private collection into public view and turns it into a meeting place: between different artistic languages, between Cyprus and the international art world, and between the visible artwork and the less tangible experiences that shape it. However, Kulbachevskaya is careful to leave the gallery’s importance open to others. “The public and time will decide that” she says. For now, CHANNELLED offers an invitation to spend time with art that is intellectually expansive, emotionally open and alive to the many ways people make meaning.
Find more information on CHANNELLED and XeniArtSpace here.
