Sound and song play a central role in the work of award-winning British-Greek artist Mikhail Karikis, whose works employ the power of peoples’ voices and of collectively-produced sounds to focus on themes of social and environmental justice, human action and solidarity.
The exhibition at CAST comprises two short films made with groups of young people.
We Are Together Because… (2025) was made with a group of 52 fourteen- to eighteen-year-old students at the Artallis Conservatoire in Lisbon, with whom Karikis worked on a project that marked the 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, which took place in 1974. During the development of the project with the students, he posed a series of questions relating to revolution and democracy. We Are Together Because… brings together the students’ sung responses, reflecting on what can unite us in times of crisis.
Ain’t Got No Fear (2016) features a small group of boys, aged eleven to thirteen, growing up in the post-industrial marshland of the Isle of Grain in Kent. The film follows the boys through their familiar haunts – woodlands co-opted for raves, fields overshadowed by the demolition of a power plant, and disused military tunnels. They rap about their lives, imagining the ways in which their futures might play out, periodically returning to the refrain ‘Are we going to stay or are we going to move?’
The films are shown as a loop with a total run time of 22 minutes.
Mikhail Karikis works with moving image, sound, performance and other media. He often engages in long-term projects with communities, involving them in the creative process. His work is frequently presented internationally in leading museums and contemporary art biennials, as well as in music and theatre settings. Solo exhibitions of his work have recently been presented at Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland (2025); Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal (2025) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST, Athens, Greece (2023). In 2024 Karikis received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists.