Exhibition Talk #3

EXHIBITION TALK #1 | 3/May | 16:00 | Kiosk
With Armine Hovhannisyan (Artist)
Fragmented Amputations works with 3D technologies and critical language of visual arts to explore how »amputation« of bodies, of lands, of culture is a method of erasing histories. Based on the artist’s original research, this project focuses on the violence against the indigenous Armenians of Artsakh since the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the 2023 ethnic cleansing of Artsakh.
 

EXHIBITION TALK #2 | 4/May | 16:00 | Kiosk
With Ruben Arevshatyan (Artist, Curator)
Within the endless flow of horrifying images that came out during the last two years as a result of evolving tragedies of nowadays globalizing warfare there is a certain type of images that despite of being deprived of explicit violence, blood and dead human bodies sometimes could be even more shocking. Ruined housings, scorched earth, yawning voids of the devastated terrains that once used to be modern landscapes not only expose the dreadfulness and absurdity of the wars waged today but also make us to contemplate about the prehistory and deep reasons of this catastrophe.
 
The Exhibition Voids of Presence/ Between Past and Future at the Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin took place in the autumn 2021, just a few months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The exhibition was addressing the spatial and architectonic transformations in the urban landscapes worldwide within the global neoliberal context of the last three decades focusing on the subject of voids. Through different artistic reflections voids, as physical and metaphoric spaces, were considered as both imaginary communal territories of modernist era capable to catalyze social formative processes and new utopic zones of neoliberal reality providing a hope for individualized, commodified, prosperous, safe life. The Voids of Destruction that we are witnessing today need also consideration from various perspectives. However, may be one of them could be the viewpoint that refers to the broken promises of neoliberal utopias. 
 

EXHIBITION TALK #3 | 10/May | 16:00 | Kiosk
With Angela Harutyunyan (Art historian)
The talk offers a historical understanding of the advent of contemporary art in Armenia as a mode of artistic production within the tempestuous transformations from the late Soviet to the post-Soviet society in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It addresses the ways in which the cultural contradictions of the so-called period of transition manifested themselves in the formation of artists’ collectives that came together in opposition to the signifier »Soviet«.
 

EXHIBITION TALK #4 | 16/May | 16:00 | Kiosk
With Nairi Khatchadourian (Curator, Founder AHA collective)
How does a curator’s practice evolve in times of war, forced displacement, and geopolitical instability, as Armenia has experienced over the past five years? What new artforms emerge when the curatorial approach is place- and context-sensitive? The talk will explore the care and engagement driving curatorial approaches in Armenia’s contemporary art scene through Nairi Khatchadourian’s experience with AHA collective, a curatorial practice she founded in Yerevan in 2019. Drawing on some grassroot curatorial projects initiated by AHA collective in museums, heritage sites, rural settings, and cultural spaces across Armenia, Nairi Khatchadourian will explore how curators can challenge traditional exhibition-making and art-making to reimagine practices that are deeply rooted in the territory and address the pressing and complex realities shaping Armenia today. Through collaborations with artists, researchers, craftswomen, and institutions, Nairi Khatchadourian positions curatorial practice as a powerful agent for social transformation and cultural continuity. 


© Davit Kochunts, Kim, 2021; Oil on canvas