XARKIS MULTI-RESIDENCY

Established in 2016, Xarkis’ roaming multi-residency programme focuses on socio-ecological practices and encourages participants from diverse disciplinary pathways to become temporary residents of a local context and respond to a given theme whilst collaborating with communities, informed by the site-specific context.

Here, various art practices become democratised and are open to the public. As such, one of our main goals is to co-create contemporary art with communities, regardless of community members’ previous experience in such forms of art. Our practice shows that the accessibility of art and the drive to speak the local language help dismantle hierarchies and strengthen social inclusion through exchanging good practices, establishing peer-to-peer support networks and exchanges of mutual benefits to artists and communities. During the Multi-residency programme, different community groups engage in intercultural and cross-cultural dialogue via different art forms.

In turn, by learning how local communities and minorities live, and by adopting anthropological and collaborative methods of research and engagement during our initiatives, we believe that we can move towards a more inclusive world, with planetary and social welfare at heart.