Cypriot photographer wins prestigious “After Nature Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize”
Source: in-cyprus.com
Cypriot artist Stelios Kallinikou has been awarded the prestigious After Nature Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize 2026, one of the most significant international visual arts awards.
Kallinikou will share the €80,000 prize with German artist Susanne Kriemann, with each receiving €40,000 for their projects, the Berlin-based C/O Foundation and Frankfurt-based Crespo Foundation announced.
An exhibition featuring both artists’ work will premiere from September 12, 2026, to February 3, 2027, at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus before moving to the Crespo Foundation’s Open Space in Frankfurt in spring 2027.
The annual prize enables the realisation of two research-intensive projects and recognises artists who explore new meanings related to nature, photography, and visual media.
Kallinikou’s project examines the Akrotiri Salt Lake, which forms part of a British overseas territory in Cyprus.
The lake is an important wetland in the eastern Mediterranean region, located near some of Cyprus’s oldest archaeological sites and serves as a key habitat for numerous flora and fauna.
Kallinikou conveys the tensions between military exploitation, ecological fragility, and ancestral heritage in this place by interweaving multiple time periods. His work combines photography, film, sound, and participatory actions.
Jury member Taous Dahmani described the project as “a powerful and timely exploration” of a site “where the legacies of ecological violence, colonialism, and geopolitical control converge”.
Born in 1985 in Cyprus, Kallinikou is an artist whose works draw on photography, video, and sound to create introspective worlds at the intersection of politics, colonialism, environment, technology, spirituality, and the power of images. His speculative narratives question land and the body as both territorial and ideological constructs.
The artist is cofounder and head of Thkio Ppalies Project Space in Nicosia, Cyprus, where he lives and works. His work has been exhibited in many places including Foam, Amsterdam; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Nimac, Nicosia; and Benaki Museum, Athens. It has also been included in major biennials and at institutions such as Ural Industrial Biennial and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.
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