Oiko-nomia: Peasant Women, Invisible Others, and Resilience

The symposium Oiko-nomia: Peasant Women, Invisible Others, and Resilience examined the historical and ongoing roles of Indigenous peoples, peasant communities, migrants, and other marginalised groups in sustaining and transforming rural landscapes. Despite their fundamental contributions, their labour has often been erased within patriarchal, nationalist, and colonial frameworks that idealise the countryside as a site of cultural purity. Taking this erasure as its point of departure, the symposium focused on the figure of the peasant woman and the so-called “invisible others” whose labour lies at the intersection of land, cultivation, economy, and ecological care.

Within this framework, the symposium revisited the etymological meaning of economy, deriving from the Greek words oikos (household) and nomos (management or stewardship). Rather than referring to markets or finance, economy was approached as the everyday organisation of care, survival, and resilience. Bringing together artists and researchers from diverse fields, the symposium reflected on the consequences of erased forms of labour and considered what economies of care and forms of situated knowledge emerge when these often-overlooked practices are brought into view.

In conjunction with the symposium, the bread-decorating workshop Κι αν παρήλθον τα χρόνια… τ’ όνομά σου: ψωμί στο τραπέζι was organised on June 13 2026 in collaboration with Katerina Voskaridou of the thematic museum Το Πλουμιστό Ψωμί (Limassol). Open to families with children, the workshop included a talk, storytelling, and a hands-on bread-decorating session.

In the context of the parallel programme of the group exhibition Agropoetics: soils/bodies curated by Dr Elena Parpa at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nicosia, part of the Cultural Programme of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026.