The countdown is on for the 4th edition of the Larnaca Biennale (October 15 – November 28, 2025). Alongside the artists selected through the open call, two world-renowned artists have been invited to participate and create new works specifically designed for the city’s urban landscape.
Selected by Biennale curator Sana López Abellán, Italy/USA-based artist Ann Tarantino and UK artist Steve Messam, will visit Larnaca to create site-specific installations that transform the city’s public spaces and spark conversation between residents, visitors, and the city itself.
“These are two artists with an international presence in contemporary art,” says the Larnaca Biennale Artistic Director, Vassilis Vassiliades, “whose practices engage with the urban space and provoke open dialogue between citizens and the urban environment.”
Ann Tarantino
Ann Tarantino is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on placemaking, exploring the experiences of ‘place’ by combining digital and analogue methods. Her creative practice investigates the relationship between the natural world and the built environment. Through drawing, painting, installation and site-specific public art, she engages viewers in a dialogue around the relationship of landscapes to time, space, culture, and movement.
Delicate lines and bursts of colour are featured in Tarantino’s work, layered with motifs drawn from observations of natural and urban settings – often collected in her sketchbook or camera during walks – that evoke the complexity of the modern world and its shifting landscapes.
Her work has been exhibited widely around the world, with public art installations appearing in various settings, including museums and galleries, botanical gardens, and city streets.
Participation in Larnaca Biennale 2025
During her two-week residency in Larnaca, Ann Tarantino will create a site-specific artwork for Larnaca Biennale 2025. Over the past year, the artist has been bracing the city’s topography – from its rivers and waterbeds to its walking paths and historic routes.
This study into the lines that make up the city will be translated into her artwork, reflecting Larnaca’s historical and cultural identity. In collaboration with Youth Makerspace, Tarantino will create a laser-engraved installation which will be placed in a central window front, lit up in the evening.
What is most exciting about Tarantino’s work is that upon its dismantling, the artwork will be broken up into small pieces, which the public will be able to collect and take home a piece they like.
Steve Messam
Steve Messam is globally renowned for his striking, large-scale and ephemeral installations that transform natural landscapes and architecture, contrasting the old with the new. As an environmental artist, he creates public interventions in urban settings and buildings with bold forms, shapes and colours, breathing new life into architectural and historical spaces.
His inflatable textile installations are so large that they are often described as being “bigger than a house”, and through their bold presence, they reimagine everyday environments.
Messam’s installations have an element of surprise as they pop up in destinations seemingly overnight and invite audiences to experience a space through an entirely new perspective. His work has been presented in cities, historic monuments, rivers and gardens across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, as well as part of the 2009 Venice Biennale and the 2006 Shanghai Biennale.
Participation in Larnaca Biennale 2025
For Larnaca Biennale’s 4th edition, Steve Messam will bring his large inflatable structures to the coastal city, engaging in a dialogue with its historical and urban identity. Following a summer trip to Larnaca, the artist and the Biennale team carried on-site research to develop an installation design specifically for one Larnaca landmark.
A few days before Biennale’s opening week, Messam will again travel to Larnaca to set up his installation ata historic building in Larnaca. Its location will not be revealed to the public until its installation day. Following its reveal, the public will be able to witness it up close and experience the role of art in a public space.
Two international voices, one contemporary artistic experience
“Having the artists here, shaping their works in real time, brings unique depth and authenticity to Larnaca Biennale,” concludes Vassilis Vassiliades. “With the participation of Steve Messam and Ann Tarantino, Larnaca Biennale reaffirms its place on the contemporary cultural map of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, establishing itself as a platform that offers meaningful, multi-layered contemporary art experiences to audiences in Cyprus and the wider region.”
