Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion
Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion is a workshop at Kartzin x Visual Voices, Nicosia, on Tuesday 17 November 2026 at 18:00.
Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion is a workshop at Kartzin x Visual Voices, Nicosia, on Tuesday 17 November 2026 at 18:00.
A public discussion on art, gender, identity, trauma and collective consciousness featuring visual artist Natis and psychoanalyst Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou at Kartzin x Visual Voices in Nicosia on 17 November 2026, conducted in English.
Good to know about Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion
Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion takes place on Tue 17 Nov 2026, 18:00.
Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion is held at Kartzin x Visual Voices, Nicosia.
Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion is organised by Visual Voices.
The speakers are visual artist Natis and psychoanalyst Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou. Natis is a conceptual painter working between Berlin and Nicosia whose work examines collective and individual psychological landscapes. Dr. Saketopoulou is a Cypriot and Greek psychoanalyst based in New York, teaching at NYU's postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and holding the Avenali Chair in the Humanities at UC Berkeley for 2025-2026.
The discussion will examine the relationship between art, power, identity, gender, collective consciousness and trauma. Key topics include ethnocentrism, internalized gender control, the aestheticization of trauma, how artistic creation connects to power, when identity becomes a mechanism of restriction, and how trauma acquires artistic value through aestheticization. The discussion will also explore how social and cultural categories shape human subjectivity, and how collective identification can transform into ethnocentrism.
The public discussion "Ethnolatria and Traumatolatria: Art, Gender, Cyprus and the Re(li)gion" will take place at Kartzin by Visual Voices, in Nicosia.
Visual artist Natis and psychoanalyst Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou will discuss the relationship between art, power, identity, gender, collective consciousness and trauma.
The discussion will examine ethnocentrism, internalized gender control and the aestheticization of trauma, and will be conducted in English.
A discussion examining how art connects with power, ethnocentrism, gender identities and the aestheticization of trauma, through the meeting of psychoanalysis with artistic practice.
These are some of the questions that will be raised in the public discussion:
How is artistic creation connected to power?
When does identity turn from a means of self-determination into a mechanism of restriction?
What happens when trauma acquires artistic value through its aestheticization?
Visual artist Natis and psychoanalyst and researcher Dr Avgi Sakketopoulou take part in the conversation, approaching issues of identity, gender, trauma and collective consciousness through the meeting of psychoanalysis, politics and art.
At the center will be the ways in which social and cultural categories shape human subjectivity, as well as the conditions under which collective identification can turn into ethnocentrism.
At the same time, the conversation will examine when gender categories function as mechanisms of internalized control, and how the artistic representation of trauma is affected by the mechanisms of recognition and reward within the art world.
The meeting takes place in Nicosia, a city that the two speakers approach as an "impossible homeland," opening a dialogue around the contradictions of identity, memory and belonging.
Natis is a conceptual painter working between Berlin and Nicosia. His work examines collective and individual psychic landscapes, with particular emphasis on the formation of the artist's identity through Western models and social power relations. In his practice he uses different artistic personas, among them Hasan Aksaygın, Hank Yan Agassi and Hasso Weiß Ehrenwerth, as different starting points for exploring artistic subjectivity. He is currently pursuing doctoral research titled Heteronymy in Contemporary Visual Art at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts.
Dr Avgi Sakketopoulou is a Cypriot and Greek psychoanalyst based in New York. She teaches in the postdoctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University and holds the Avenali Chair in the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley for the period 2025-2026. Her research interests include trauma, aesthetic experience, queer and trans lives, race and migration. She is the author of the book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia, and has co-authored with Ann Pellegrini Gender Without Identity. Her work has been recognized with professional distinctions, and one of her interviews is included in the permanent collection of the Freud Museum in Vienna. She is also the founder of the Cypriot and Greek chapters of the Palestine Mental Health Network, sits on the Arts Council of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and is a founding member of P-HOLE.
