The role of art and the artist in society was being examined long before the introduction of socialist realism. Many thinkers, indeed, have addressed the unavoidable conflict between art and authority, advocating a kind of anarchist individualism - the idea that the form of government most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Especially during the 19th and 20th centuries and the dramatic social, political and economic transformations defining this period, art is increasingly more receptive and critical towards real-life conditions and becomes an integral part of them; artists, often embracing the new socialist ideologies, reject the notion of art existing in some idealized state outside the reality of things, but seek to work toward the moral and intellectual elevation of the masses.

The proposed study wishes to investigate the relationship between criticality and expressive potential in Cypriot contemporary art from the 1950's until today. The particular social, political and economic conditions shaping Cypriot life in the 20th century are crucial to the understanding of how idiosyncratically art has been produced and experienced, both internally and in relation to the international artistic landscape. During this time, Cyprus was not only disadvantaged by its remoteness from the continental centres of change and intellectual activity, it also handled the persistent effects of imperialism, colonialism, military occupation, as well as the total "insulation" of the two main local communities from each other. Paired with the absence of a potent theoretical and critical environment, these circumstances may partially explain why the artistic vocabularies of modernity made a rather superficial and untimely appearance here, and may also help to interpret the scarcity of socio-political reference in Cypriot art of the last decades, or its general limitation to an aesthetic and formal potential.

This investigation will attempt to relate the content of local artistic production to a charged political history and to questions of individual, social and cultural identity, as viewed in the context of postmodernity and postcolonial theory. More specifically, it will assess the degree to which a 'revolutionary ethos' was manifest in local artistic production. Particularly since the Declaration of Independence in 1960, the historical relationship of Cypriot art with the notion of anarchist individualism and the relevance of contemporary modes of expression and public presentation of art to the current socio-political dynamics in the island.

The development of this project will mainly rely on archive research at the State Gallery of Contemporary Cypriot Art in Nicosia, and on interviews/focus group discussions with local artists and art professionals on related issues. As a historical backdrop to this research, selected examples from the cultural production of societies in times of socio-political crises will be examined, particularly in areas of the world considered "contested" or "marginal" in relation to the West.

This study aims to contribute to expanding knowledge around Cypriot Contemporary Art, a subject that remains largely unexplored theoretically, and will proceed in tandem with the on-going process of establishing the first independent Museum of Contemporary Art in Cyprus.