Ban Chka
In her next piece for “Outside In” Maria Gunko recounts her exploration of the Armenian language. Learning it for a foreigner can be tough, she says, but not as tough as it may seem at first glance. Every cloud has a silver lining.
The Shifter Under the Monastery
The surroundings of the Kobayr Monastery are a contrast between the eternal and the fleeting, the essence and the image, serenity and mundane chaos. Maria Gunko’s story is a patchwork of two places and one character who seemingly dwells between them, making a life from what’s available.
A Short Colorful Lyrical Digression
In commemoration of renowned Armenian poet Yeghishe Charents, Maria Gunko delves into his colorful universe to see how it captures the essence of Armenia's landscapes and geography, drawing parallels with her perceptions.
When Patriarchy and Imperialism Collide: Some Questions of Positionality
In trying to understand her assumptions of her position as a researcher, and the spaces she could access, Maria Gunko uncovered that it was not her ethnicity that informed how she was perceived on the field site, but rather the explosive mixture of her gender and ethnicity.
The Female Fix
According to traditional gendered divisions of household labor, repairs fall to the man of the house and his ability to perform such work is very much linked to being seen as a “proper” man. But what about the women? Maria Gunko’s fascinating journey into the realm of the “female fix”.
After Us
The dissolution of the Soviet Union created vast areas of abandonment and no-go zones that froze in time. In this next essay in the “Outside In” series, Maria Gunko writes that until the material relics of the Soviet Union disappear for good, we are deemed to revisit them, provoking thoughts about what societies value, how they evolve and what they leave behind.
The (Un)Fairytale of Siranush
Following the story of Dastakert, Armenia’s smallest city, this next essay in the “Outside In” series looks behind the veil of yet another small Armenian city and offers a glimpse into the lives of its “void dwellers”, namely Siranush.
A Place on the Edge of Armenia’s Urban Geography
Once an agricultural settlement, tidily inscribed into the picturesque mountain landscape, Dastakert was remade by the Soviet state into a site of copper-molybdenum extractivism. That project failed. What happened to the city?
The Russian “Gift of Civilization” to Armenia: “Relocant” Edition
The unprecedented influx of Russian citizens due to the Russia-Ukraine war into states that were under Moscow’s rule for centuries, is often locally perceived as endangering the identity and undermining the independence of these states. Maria Gunko explains.
Living Portals: Reflections on Territorialization in Contemporary Armenian Art
A review of an exhibition in the village of Verishen in Armenia’s Syunik region featuring a contemporary carpet collection by Goris-born artist Davit Kochunts, examines the concept of social space and the process of territorialization.
EVN Report’s mission is to empower Armenia, inspire the diaspora and inform the world through sound, credible and fact-based reporting and commentary. Our goal is to increase public trust in the media. EVN Report is the media arm of EVN News Foundation registered in the Republic of Armenia in 2017.
