WHW, The Situation of Contemporary Armenian Art
Nova Gallery, Teslina 7, Zagreb
Monday, March 29, 2010, 7 p.m.
lecture
Ruben Arevshatyan
The Situation of Contemporary Armenian Art or Permanent Resistance in the Context of Permanent Transitions
The transitions taking place in the Armenian socio-political, economic and cultural situation from the mid-1980s to the present have evolved in parallel with the intense changes in the situation of local contemporary art. The fall of the Soviet Union, the declaration of independence, the Karabakh war, the crisis of the economic, social, and political system, as well as the system of cultural constructs, and the advancement of neoliberal culture - all this is the background for practices and discourses developing on the Armenian contemporary art scene. interrelationships can be described as permanent resistance.
The presentation will attempt to unravel the historical context and analyze the core and forms of that resistance. We will show some projects, pictures, and video fragments from the works of Hamlet Hovsepyan, Arman Grigoryan, Karina Matsakyan, AZAT, Karen Andreasyan, Sone Abgarjan, Tigran Khachaturian, Arevik Arevshatyan, Ruben Grigorian, Vagram Agasyan, and others.
Ruben Arevshatyan is an artist, art critic, independent curator. He graduated from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts and Theater, Department of Sculpture. He teaches art history at the Department of Fine Arts of the Armenian Open University. From 1997 to 2004, he was the artistic director of the Hay-Art Cultural Center and the author of numerous critical texts in local and international magazines and publications. His critical articles discuss current issues of Armenian contemporary art, architecture, art theory, and art education. The curator is also a collaborator of local and international projects such as "The Great Atrophy", "Parallel Reality", "Three Tendencies", "Goodbye, Parajanov", "Local Modernities" ... Together with Georg Schoellhammer, he is the organizer of the research project "Sweet Sixties". ", as part of which an international seminar will be held in autumn 2010 in Nova Gallery. Ruben Arevshatyan lives and works in Yerevan.
support:
City Office for Culture, Education, and Sports of the City of Zagreb
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
National Foundation for Civil Society Development
all events at the Nova Gallery are co-organized by WHW and AGM