“Coming from hot Cyprus, I love the Swedish summer and landscape. Norrköping has so much greenery and centres around a dynamic river. You can walk everywhere or take public transportation. Everything seems so organized, and people are polite and considerate. This will be an interesting year for me and my family” says Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Professor at the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology.
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert will work at Linköping University as the Moa Martinson visiting professor for a year. Her research environment is Tema Q, a dynamic environment that accommodates a broad range of research in the humanities and social sciences.
Theopisti is an artist/researcher, working at the intersection of creative practice and academic exploration. Her approach is rooted in art-based research, where artistic expression is not merely a response to research findings but an integral part of the entire process – from the initial inquiry to the final outcome.
The invitation to become a guest professor at Linköping University was totally unexpected for Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, and it was met with genuine enthusiasm. The opportunity to spend a year in Sweden felt like a perfect fit.
“I was very surprised because it was not something I expected. I didn't know I had been nominated. But I was absolutely thrilled with the opportunity to spend a year in Sweden, because I thought it would give me the time and space to focus on my work, and to familiarize myself with another research environment, another university, and another country.”
Her research delves into how local workers and communities are represented – or excluded – in photographic archives related to Cypriot archaeology. She examines what narratives the photographs convey, what perspectives are included, and what is potentially silenced. Her artistic practice then engages with these insights, creating a continuous dialogue between research and art. Her interest in workers' stories connects her to Moa Martinson, who also wrote about the working class and more particularly women's lives and work.
Theopisti hadn’t heard of Moa Martinson before LiU contacted her, but she’s happy to have discovered her work because she’s very interested in workers’ history – especially women’s. She has learnt a lot about Martinson by visiting the ongoing exhibition at Norrköpings stadsmuseum (the State Museum in Norrköping). She has also read Women and Apple Trees, the only one of Moa Martinson’s books that she could find translated into English.
“It's a tough book to read because it vividly portraits the hardships of the era and the disadvantaged position poor women found themselves. I am hoping to learn more about Norrköping and its history. Apparently Norrköping was once one of the worst places for workers to live during the industrial revolution. It is very difficult to imagine this today. The city is beautifully redesigned and revitalized while keeping and showcasing its industrial heritage. I also appreciate the work the Arbetets Museum (the Work Museum) is doing as it brings different voices to light and at the same time looks towards the future.”
As an artist Theopisti mainly works with photography, but in the last few years she has also worked with film, AI-generated images, and printmaking.
“I am drawn to people, their experiences and stories. A lot of my work around archaeology and Cyprus is not about objects as one might expect. It’s about people and their relationship with objects and photographic material. I am interested in photographic archives in museums but also in photographic records that haven’t been collected because they were not considered important enough. In some of my projects I try to create ‘alternative archives’ by collecting everyday photographs from workers, or even create fictional, speculative archives with the help of AI of people who had no photographic records themselves.”
