CYFEST 17 Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape

November 27, 2025 — January 25, 2026, Thessaloniki, Greece

CYLAND MediaArtLab, in collaboration with MOMus-Museum of Modern Art–Costakis Collection, MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Centre for Studies in Russian, Central Asian and Caucasian Art, is pleased to announce the 17th edition of the International Media Art Festival CYFEST — Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape at MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, Thessaloniki, Greece. Tracing the enduring impulse of the Organic avant-garde, the exhibition considers how its radical visions of form and perception are reimagined through today’s expanded artistic tools—algorithmic systems, kinetic structures, immersive environments, and participatory practices. Bringing together twentieth-century works from the Costakis Collection and the Frants Family Collection with new projects by over twenty international artists presented by CYLAND MediaArtLab, Natura Naturans reveals how the avant-garde’s experimental ethos continues to shape our understanding of movement, materiality, and the interconnectedness of all living systems.

The dialogue begins with the artists of the Costakis Collection, whose work marks the birth of the Organic Art movement in Soviet Leningrad in the mid-1920s—a movement represented today in the Thessaloniki Museum of Contemporary Art. Its founders, including Mikhail Matyushin (1861–1934), Elena Guro (1887–1913), and Boris Ender (1893–1960), Ksenia Ender (1895–1955), Maria Ender (1897–1942), and Yurii Ender (1898–1963), cultivated an extraordinary sensitivity to the living rhythms of the world. The “Organica” school is one of the most refined and philosophically rich currents of the Russian avant-garde. It arose from a fascination with nature, cosmism, and holistic perception—all characteristic of the circle surrounding Matyushin and Guro. Matyushin taught artists to perceive the world not fragmentarily but as an interconnected whole where color, sound, and movement interpenetrate—a principle that continues to resonate in the present exhibition. The watercolors of Ksenia, Yurii, and Maria Ender, dissolve form into light and flow, anticipating contemporary multimedia art in their search for plasticity free from rigid structure and for synesthetic, “expanded” perception.

The Frants Family Collection presents paintings by St. Petersburg artists of the second half of the twentieth century who continued this organic tradition. Their works remain deeply connected to the ideas of Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Matyushin, and Pavel Filonov. Galina Povarova, in her painting cycles, explored the perception of color, further developing Matyushin’s scientific color theory. Pavel Kondratyev, a student of Matyushin, carried this exploration into the realm of intuitive form. Alexander Baturin perceived landscape as a spiritual body rather than a physical phenomenon, elaborating on the “bowl-dome system” of Vladimir Sterligov, a student of Malevich. Alexander Kozhin, another of Sterligov’s students, continues this organic vision in his “wrapped” paintings, where curved spatial tensions and fluid forms make the canvas appear to breathe like a living organism.

In the contemporary section of Natura Naturans, the organic worldview of the avant-garde finds its technological echo. Artists translate the language of living systems into new media, reimagining perception through data, light, and sound. Here, nature understood as natura naturans—nature that creates—resonates with the logic of computational and networked processes. Both operate as open, self-organizing systems in constant flux. The artists in this exhibition treat data and code not as tools of control but as living materials that evolve, react, and interact—creating an art of collaboration rather than representation, where human and nonhuman forces co-produce aesthetic experience.

The exhibition opens with a live performance by Mexican artist Hugo Solis, whose sound-based intervention transforms environmental data into an immersive acoustic experience and by Estonian artist Jaanika Peerna. In her participatory performance, Peerna uses a sculpted piece of ice as a totemic representation of strength, beauty, and environmental fragility—inviting audiences to witness the ephemeral balance between creation and dissolution. Throughout its duration, Natura Naturans will also feature a series of performances by Greek and Italian artists.

Curators:

Anna Frants, Maria Tsantsanoglou, Silvia Burini, Giuseppe Barbieri, Elena Gubanova, Eirini Papakonstantinou, Domna Gounari, Lidiia Griaznova, Sergei Komarov, Victoria Ilyushkina, Alexandra Dementieva, Jérôme Nivet-Carzon

List of Artists:

Vasileios Agiomyrgianakis & Haruka Hirayama & the duo hakosalo_tuohino (Jussi Tuohino, Osmo Hakosalo), Dafin Antoniadou & Andrey Smirnov, Max Blotas, Alexandra Dementieva, Maria F. Dolores & Paula Pin, Eva Duru & Anthie Kyrkou, φø (Fotis Rovolis), Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Alexey Grachev, Sergei Komarov & Lidiia Griaznova, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexei Kostroma, Linda Loh, Natalia Lyakh, Anastasia Fiori Metallinou & Tilemachos Moussas, Katerina Moschou, Tuula Närhinen, Vito Palumbo & Niki Lada & Francesco Abbrescia, Jaanika Peerna, Mariateresa Sartori, Hugo Solis, Alexander Terebenin, Maria Varela, Eric Vernhes, Mathieu Zurstrassen.

Collections Represented

The Frants Family Collection:

Alexander Baturin, Victoria Belakovskaya, Liudmila Belova, Leon Bogdanov, Konstantin Dydyshko, Tatyana Glebova, Maria Gorokhova, Jane Greer, Valentin Gromov, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Vladimir Grinberg, Anatoly Kaplan, Maria Kazanskaya, Pavel Kondratyev, Alexander Kozhin, Nikolai Kulbin, Anna Leporskaya, Valentin Levitin, Xenia Livchak, Vera Matyukh, Evygeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, Valentina Povarova, Richard Vasmi, Vladimir Volkov 

The Costakis Collection:

Mikhail Matyushin, Elena Guro, Maria Ender, Ksenia Ender, Yurii Ender, Solomon Nikritin 

Opening Night: November 27

Doors open: 7:00 PM

with the performances by Jaanika Peerna and Hugo Solis

CYFEST 17 is organized by CYLAND MediaArtLab. The project's general sponsor is Frants Foundation.

Visit CYFEST 17: Natura Naturans Webpage