The first Armenian-owned photo studios in Constantinople and Tbilisi at the end of the 1850s not only immortalized people’s lives, they were an effective shortcut to modernity and a powerful symbol of cultural emancipation.
While some of the more mercantile segments of Armenia’s economic, political and media echelons prefer to uphold the delusional business-as-usual game following the war, the wider socio-cultural realm shows much healthier signs of critical self-regard.
When cinematographer Rudolf Vatinyan passed away from COVID-related complications in 2020, people eulogized about an exacting professional who had filmed a number of iconic films. No one remembered, however, that Vatinyan had a parallel creative passion.
How a black evening handbag found among countless items in Yerevan’s largest flea market revealed a paradigmatic shift from the egalitarian criteria of Soviet ideology, which accorded functional objects with purely practical properties.
A new exhibition by the History Museum of Armenia entitled “Costume: Fragments of Identity” recently opened in downtown Yerevan. The curator of the exhibition, Vigen Galstyan speaks to EVN Report about how in the conceptualization of the temporary exhibit, it became clear how little scholarly research has been done on traditional Armenian costumes from a theoretical, political or social perspective.
Although performance art has practically disappeared from the contemporary art scene as an autonomous medium, early practitioners had a profound impact in changing perceptions of the body in Armenia’s post-independence culture.
Hybridizing fine art and mass culture, Soviet-era “chekanka” art generated an unconventional visual world in which ancient and modern mythologies, as well as sexual and political desires could be blended into a patently local cultural narrative.
Vigen Galstyan explores the humble charm of Soviet Armenian mechanical clocks in this first instalment of a series of articles about Armenia’s not-too-distant past as a major producer of everyday consumer goods and a hot spot for industrial design in the USSR.
A story weaving together the fragments of a woman’s life who organized the chaos of reality into a sensible and livable realm offhandedly called “home” but no one recognized it until she was gone.
The forced detachment of April 24, 2020, brought an essential degree of cerebral contemplation that allowed us to meditate upon our loss, but also see the many ways that we've managed to (and continue to) overcome it.
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.
