The Artist as Anarchist: A review of Arman Grigoryan’s work

Punks in Gyumri, nudists in Little Armenia, love parade in Burj Hamood, hippies in Dilijan, an anarchist and a Yeraz van? It’s impossible? If we take away the question marks, then all these become the canvases by Arman Grigoryan and the impossible becomes possible in art.

Poet Priest?: Swiss-sponsored festival challenges Armenian traditions

Can an Armenian woman be anointed priest?

If she is a bisexual feminist poet performing in a Yerevan night club, yes.

At The Club, American-Armenian Nancy Agabian acted out her poetry Wednesday night in themes that challenge Armenian traditions and push limits of toleration in a conservative society.

The performance art was part of the “One Step” program of feminist events sponsored by the Swiss Utopiana Organization (www.utopiana.am).

Exposure: Video installation challenges Armenian mores

Yerevan’s “Akumb” (Club) café was closed for customers for three days – from 28^th to 30^th October – and open for art connoisseurs. Two artists, an Armenian and a German, were showing their video films on non-traditional sexual subjects.

One of the works was Nik Haffner’s and Haroutiun Simonyan’s joint installation “Tangent Views 2”, in which there were two video films along with two photographs.  At the bottom there was the video film, in which Simonyan, naked, facing the wall is jumping all the time. At the top there is a photograph hanging on the wall of an, naked, posing like a woman. In one of the viewer’s opinion, the embodiment of masturbation is where hands are not applied and the male member is replaced with the whole body.

Haffner presents a 1974 photograph of his aunt, topless. His aunt was a child psychiatrist by day and a lap dancer by night. In his work Haffner draws parallels between his aunt’s dual life and his own and in the video film he is wearing his aunt’s clothes and is trying in every way to make his male body look like a female’s.

Marked for Life: An artist leaves his legacy in stone

At the end of life Vahan Ghazumyan was looking at the world through the eyes of his stone creations.

In a secluded alcove above the Zangu Gorge an artist has left 30 years of his life in stone.

Near the well-known building of the Yerevan Wine Factory, the unadvertised work of artist Vahan Ghazumyan is his legacy, and a commentary of his nation.

The master sculptor began carving his stone garden in 1971. When he died at age 80 earlier this year some 100 pieces were left as his eternal memorial, named by the poet Shiraz as «Garden of Stone».

His memoirs tell of his and his garden’s intention . . .

«Using my own forces I wished to create a bright evidence of the Armenian people’s world-building nature,» he wrote. «For bringing my aim into life I chose a wild rocky spot of Zangu Gorge. For its unsightly look this spot filled people living in the neighboring areas with displeasure and they turned it into a trash dump. I cleaned up the whole territory myself without any technical equipment and founded there a rocky garden made in folk style.»

Anti-Poetry: Street rhythms deafen the eternal in contemporary artist’s work

People’s poet: Shekoyan challenges convention with his street style .

As freedom of artistic expression toddles its way toward maturity in Armenia, philosophical clashes arise between traditionalists and those inclined to break barriers.

The clash between the familiar (and therefore the accepted) and the uneasy unexpected finds expression in art and in literature: Some bookstores stopped selling a new Armenian novel because it was deemed too racy.

In the world of poetry, Armen Shekoyan is also challenging tradition.

Shekoyan is the only poet whose work is being published in newspapers (originally in «Aravot» and now «Haikakan Zhamanak»).

His second book of verses «Hotel Yerevan» came out in July, after first being printed in the daily newspapers.

And while he may be gaining an unexpected audience through the newspapers, he is getting expected criticism from literary circles, where his style is largely disregarded as something less than literature.