IAPT PHCommission 2026 - Marietta Mavrokodatou
Exhibition & Book Launch
Opening: 27 February, 19:00@The Island Club
Duration: 27 February-28 March
The second edition of the IAPT PHCommission Project 2026 features Marietta Mavrokordatou as the commissioned artist. The project presents the exhibition titled In 2s, in 3s, and launches the book titled Marietta Mavrokordatou, IAPT PHCommission, published by IAPT Press.
Initiated in 2022 by the International Association of Photography and Theory, the IAPT PHCommission project continues, with this second edition, its commitment to fostering contemporary photographic practices that engage critically with theory, materiality, and the expanded field of the photographic book.
Emerging from Cyprus and working primarily within the medium of photography, Mavrokordatou’s practice moves between analogue and digital processes, darkroom experimentation, projection, and sequence-based construction, persistently interrogating how images are produced, mediated, and experienced across time. Mavrokordatou’s practice unfolds through sequences, doublings, and loops, within which meaning emerges gradually rather than instantaneously. At times through repetition and delay as structuring principles, she resists the impulse toward resolution, instead articulating the subtle nuances of failure and evoking a heightened sense of intimacy and proximity. In doing so, the work challenges the authority of the decisive moment, proposing a practice grounded in hesitation, vulnerability, and perceptual uncertainty. At others carefully constructed images. These photographs unfold as arresting planes, atmospherically charged and executed with notable technical dexterity her practice approaches a condition of painterly abstraction. If not immediately visible, a sustained negotiation between delay and precision gradually becomes perceptible across these bodies of work, where exposure and control operate not as opposites but as interdependent conditions.
The publication itself developed through a series of sustained exchanges between the editors/curators, the designer, and the artist, during which the work was articulated, debated, and reconfigured in relation to the specific conditions of the book format. Approached as an artist’s book, it has been shaped by shared decisions regarding orientation, scale, paper, binding, and function. These parameters are not treated as neutral design choices but as conceptual conditions that actively participate in the articulation of the work. Within this framework, the book becomes a site in which photography is not merely reproduced but rethought—where vision is staged laterally, sequences unfold durationally, and images enter into sustained relationships with one another.
At the core of the project lies an understanding of the book as a primary site of artistic production and discourse, rather than as a secondary or merely exhibition documentary. In doing so, IAPT PHCommission contributes to the development of an experimental bibliography attentive to contemporary debates in photography and theory, while also broadening the visibility of Cypriot artists within an international context.
With this second publication, IAPT Press and the IAPT PHCommission reaffirm their commitment to operating as a platform for sustained research, critical reflection, and editorial experimentation. Looking ahead, future editions will continue to question how photographic practices may be published, circulated, and encountered—and how the book itself might remain an open, evolving site for artistic and theoretical exploration.
Organizers: International Association of Photography and Theory-IAPT
Sponsors: Deputy Ministry of Culture, International Association of Photography and Theory-IAPT
Curators/Editors: Artemis Eleftheriadou, Andre Zivanari
Location: The Island Club
Lanitis Arcade 18, Limassol 3036, T: 25 252010, the-island-club.com
Opening hours: Thursday–Saturday, 15:00–19:00