EXHIBITIONS

One exhibition this September will certainly stir a blockbuster frenzy, potentially also signaling a new level of international cooperation for local museums. We’re talking about Mother Goddess: From Anahit to Mary to be opened very symbolically on September 21st at the History Museum of Armenia. At the center of the show is the famous 1st century BC bronze sculptural head of Goddess Anahit loaned from the British Museum, supplemented by other artifacts from local collections. Though its precise designation and origin have been fiercely debated since its discovery near Erznka (Erzincan in eastern Anatolia) in the mid 1870s, this magnificent example of Hellenistic sculpture has long become an inextricable staple of the Armenian cultural imagery and mythology, spawning thousands of renditions on everything from public buildings to banknotes and T-shirts. It appears that the exhibition itself is designed to assert this status, rather than deconstruct the complex ways through which archaeology and art history have come to be deeply entangled in the modern nation-building project. Might it be also too much to expect that the show will actually take a feminist approach in addressing the nefarious aspects of the ‘Goddess’ typology that has so many problematic manifestations in Armenian culture? Yes? Oh well, at least there will be a more wholesome alternative to momentarily distract the public from all those phallic statues of men, currently being installed all over the country. 

Exhibition: “Mother Goddess: From Anahit to Mary”
Where: History Museum of Armenia
Republic Square, Yerevan
Dates: September 21, 2024-March 2025

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Talking about the phallic, there are a few contemporary artists who have paid more attention to or explored the subject in quite as direct a manner as Samvel Saghatelian. His latest solo exhibition, Body: Ghost Phallus presents the artist’s wildly provocative surreal series, which he had developed on and off since the mid-1990s. Using collage and mixed media, Saghatelian boldly satirizes and ‘unmasks’ the phallocentric essence of Armenian culture with a kind of effortless boldness and openness that only he seems to be capable of these days.

Exhibition: “Body: Ghost Phallus”, Samvel Saghatelian
Where: Art Kvartal Gallery 
4 Pushkin st., Yerevan
Dates: September 13-27

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Sexuality and surrealism are also at the heart of Nana Aramyan’s practice, which will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows during her solo show at the Artists’ Union of Armenia. Her large-scale paintings, however, present a wholly different, female-centric realm of subconscious impulses, fantasies and images which are visually seductive and profoundly disturbing at the same time. The fluorescent glow of Aramyan’s violet fairy-tale world casts feminine desire in a new, empowering and liberating light, something which we should definitely have more of in Armenia.

Exhibition: “Nocturnal Veil”, Nana Aramyan
Where: Artists’ Union of Armenia
16 Abovyan St., Yerevan
Dates: September 10-21

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One can’t help but see the pale echoes of the greatest of all Armenian surrealists, Yervand Kochar, in the work of his son, painter and sculptor David Kochar, whose works will also be presented at the Artists’ Union on occasion of the artist’s  85th anniversary. It’s perhaps inevitable that the shadow of as formidable an artist as Kochar senior should loom so broadly over the more conceptually modest and aesthetically conservative creations of his offspring. Spanning the 1960s-2000s, David Kochar’s works are inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity and mythology, the type of art that desperately tried to escape the ideological conditions of Soviet culture, only to fall into the trap of nostalgic romanticism. Overall, an occasion for light escapism.

Exhibition: “Revival”, David Kochar
Where: Artists’ Union of Armenia
16 Abovyan St., Yerevan
Dates: September 11-21

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There is more of that escapist fantasy in the solo exhibition of young painter Misak Hartenyan held at the Martiros Sarian house-museum. Women in oversized Baroque hats lounging carefree in bucolic and non-descript landscapes straight out of illustrated children’s books, occasionally interspersed with a schematic outline of some archetypal Picassoesque figure. Add to it some trite symbolism superficially ‘borrowed’ from Juan Miro and Paul Klee and sparkling primary colors and you get the kind of vacuous pastiche art that is as inoffensive as it is irrelevant. I have no idea who all of this is for, but if florid, oil and canvas pasties are your thing, then you know where to go.

Exhibition: “Solo Exhibition”, Misak Hartenyan
Where: Martiros Sarian House-Museum
3 Saryan St., Yerevan
Dates: Starting September 3

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Palatable art doesn’t necessarily need to be sapless. Take, for example, the watercolor artist Peto Poghosyan, who has long charmed local audiences with his delicate and hyper-realistically rendered paintings of everyday Yerevan, which capture the distinct mood of the city and our times with surprising precision. Though suffused with a tinge of nostalgia, like a wistful ode to a disappearing present, Poghosyan’s documentary approach also imbues his watercolors with a critical nerve, particularly palpable in his depictions of politically-resonant mass events (protests, rallies and so on). Presented in a short solo exhibition/sale at the Dalan Gallery, the deceptive straightforwardness of these works is only a seductive invitation to contemplate the more complex issues of contemporary life, and the ever-fascinating dynamic between painting and reality.

Exhibition: “Yearning For”, Peto Poghosyan
Where: Dalan Art Gallery
12 Abovyan St., Yerevan
Dates: September 13-15

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It would be very interesting to see what the younger generation of artists have to say about the relationship between art and reality, especially when presented under the exhibition banner “The World and Us”, to be held at the State Academy of Fine Arts. Collating the graduate works of the third-year students, the exhibition is primarily a means to get a sense of what makes the next generation of creatives tick and how adept they are at expressing their interests and concerns. Considering the new, contemporary-art focused direction that the Academy is leaning towards under the aegis of the recently-appointed director Vardan Azatyan, there is hope that… well, we’ll see some hope.

Exhibition: “The World and Us”
Where: Albert & Tove Boyajian Gallery
36 Isahakyan st., Yerevan
Dates: September 12-19

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Young, emerging artists just taking their first steps on the scene can also be encountered at the artist-run exhibition “Impulse” at NPAK. These nine fresh faces work in multimedia and transdisciplinary formats, and the exhibition announcement also promises some interactive and collaborative “acts,” based on the logic of group games. While the level of proficiency and the quality of the ideas remains to be seen on the day of the exhibition, the prospect of receiving some raw and unfiltered impulses from the youth is a ruse I’m always ready to fall for.

Exhibition: “Impulse”
Where: NPAK
1/3 Buzand St., Yerevan
Dates: Septmeber 14-21

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Another small, but what should be quite a relevant exhibition has been organized by the independent research platform Homeing at the Library for Architecture. The invited artists have been encouraged to take on an anthropological position, using the documentary archive of the Lost & Found Bureau (a repository of testimonies of displaced people) as a source of inspiration to reimagine the idea of “Home.” Following the forced displacement of the entire population of Artsakh in September 2023, such exhibitions that try to deal critically, but also productively with various aspects of such collective trauma are absolutely essential for our society today. Alas, the Homeing initiative is yet just one of the handful of artistic-intellectual responses to this calamity, which is all the more reason to see and engage with it.

Exhibition: “Lost & Found Bureau”
Where: Library for Architecture
35G Tumanyan St., Yerevan
Dates: September 13-October 1
Visiting Hours: Mon-Fri: 4 p.m.-8 p.m. / Sat-Sun: 12 noon-8 p.m.

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SCREENINGS

If I was ever asked which Isabelle Hupert movie I’d rank above all the others, I’d most certainly pick Claude Chabrol’s majestically sinister La Ceremonie. I still remember the conflicted pleasure of watching Chabrol’s surgically precise dismantling of the inner rifts within French society, delivered through two astonishingly complex performances by Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire. In many ways ahead of its time, the chilling aloofness of La Ceremonie has lost none of its power to shock, thirty years after it was first released. There is a rare opportunity to discover this gem on the big screen at the French cine club organized by Filmadaran Cultural NGO.

Screening: “La Ceremonie”
Where: National Library of Armenia
72 Teryan St., Yerevan
Dates: September 10, 7 p.m.

*In French with Armenian & English subtitles. Free Admission. 

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Over at the Yerevan multiplexes (because there are no others in the rest of the country), the usual late-summer early-fall garbage dumped on the screens by the Hollywood studios is somewhat diluted by a most unusual local commercial release. Really, it’s not every day that you hear about a film centering on a modern Armenian heroine, and one who is a world-class sports champion at that. In fact, this is the very first time such a character has even been addressed by our filmmakers. Director Anna Maxime’s film adaptation of weight-lifter Nazik Avdalyan’s real-life story of rise and fall, followed by a miraculous return to the sports arena is a clear attempt to ape the tropes of the well-trodden genre of ‘triumphant biopics’ popularized by movies such as “Cinderella Man”, “The Blind Side” and “I, Tonya”. Starring the director herself, “The Other Side of the Medal” most likely wouldn’t be able to compete with any of those films in the ring. But if the excruciatingly awful trailer is anything to go by, it’s not attempting to reinvent the wheel, but is giving it to a young female protagonist with a heavy Gyumri accent and a weight bar. And that in itself is a sight worth buying a cinema ticket for.

Screening: “The Other Side of the Medal”
Where: Cinema Moscow 
18 Abovyan St., Yerevan
Dates: Follow the link for screening dates

*Language: Armenian. Tickets at 3000 AMD 

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