ARTINERARY: March 2026

2026-03-03 - 13:24

Ah, 2026! How young—and yet how predictable—you’re already turning out to be. I find myself struggling to decide which event best encapsulates your dystopic, yet somehow blackly ironic, plan for humanity: the sudden attack on Iran by Israel and the United States; Amazon transforming Melania Trump’s woeful propaganda promo into the most expensive documentary feature to date; or the once supposedly visionary Darren Aronofsky releasing the first fully AI-generated series. Living through this era of disquieting transformations might be exciting up to a point, but the novelty wears thin when each morning brings yet another ontological tightrope walk above an abyss of unknowns, one we’re apparently meant to survive by doomscrolling through dreadfully repetitive Instagram takes on Paris Fashion Week or slow-motion ice-skating jumps at the Winter Olympics. So yes, alas, I think I’ve exhausted my threshold for videos of body bags in Tehran or bombed-out buildings in Ukraine and Gaza. Finding anything even remotely reassuring about the future is becoming a Sisyphean task, and it’s no surprise that so many of us are retreating, burying our heads in the nostalgic dunes of the past. Yet reifying the past, as Lyotard and Fredric Jameson already warned in the 1980s, may be the most dangerous trap of all. The commodification of bygone eras as lost utopian ideals produces a false sense of cohesion that blinds us to the possibility of critically making, rather than merely consuming, history. Instead of a multilateral, risky and unsentimental movement toward future forms and imaginaries, this retrospective yearning for our often pernicious legacies has locked us into a self-immolating cycle of reactionary passivity and apathy, draining our capacity for genuinely revolutionary ideas and actions. The results are already plain to see: resurgent fascism, religious fanaticism, and the void of AI slop. All the more reason, then, to demand that our artists and cultural institutions think, imagine, and act differently—from positions of defiance and refusal rather than conformity. They may well be the last bastion of resistance we have left. EXHIBITIONS THE IMAGE OF SARYAN IN SCULPTURE Talking about the past and idolized metanarratives... The Martiros Saryan Home Museum has put together an exhibition of 16 sculptures dedicated to this seminal master of Armenian modernist painting. They were certainly spoiled for choice. Few names in our cultural mythology have spurred such a dedicated and reverential following as Saryan. Widely considered as the progenitor of the “Armenian” style in modern art, the painter came to epitomize the heroic, patriotic and almost saintly model of a creator, which has come to define the perception of what an artist must be in Armenian society to this day. It’s no surprise then to see him as a subject of so many representations by major Armenian sculptors of the 20th century. The assembly of these diverse pieces produces a strangely anthropological, rather than artistic net effect. On the one hand, the exhibition becomes somewhat of a competition for the most hagiographic treatment of a historical figure. On the other, it’s like an unintentionally bizarre spectacle of an artist’s transformation from a complex public personality into a ludicrously grandiloquent icon. At the end, one can’t help but ask what was the impact of this extreme adulation on Saryan’s legacy? Hasn’t all this sanctification impeded our ability to critically reflect on the artist’s extraordinarily multifaceted career in order to truly appreciate his monumental achievements, and analyze his equally intriguing failures? Or is it, in fact, better to have him fixed as an untouchable demiurge of Armenian art, gazing into infinity from his bronze throne? Go, see the show, and judge for yourself. Exhibition: “The Image of Saryan in Sculpture” Where: Martiros Sarian House-Museum 3 Saryan Str., Yerevan Dates: Open until April MUSEUM WORK: DISCOVERIES What do we think of when we imagine a museum? A treasure house? A pantheonic temple to the nation’s greatest achievements? Perhaps a place to quietly amuse oneself with the curious remnants of the past? Whatever our notions might be, the museum is rarely seen, or understood as a complex mechanism that is a kind of a “factory” that selects, classifies and produces meaning which then surreptitiously shapes our perceptions of cultural identity and people’s relationship to the world. The new exhibition at the National Gallery of Armenia partially opens the door to this process with a showcase of around 35 objects that were recently discovered or attributed to their proper authors. Including works by Armenian and Western artists, which range from the early 16th century to the 1980s, what is most striking about this exhibition is its radically democratic ethos. By placing the art of luminaries such as Hovhannes Aivazovski, Martiros Saryan and Parmigianino next to completely overlooked names like Levon Kurkdjian, Alice Binet and René Gén, it inadvertently raises the question about who gets to be historicized, canonized and represented, and why? Regardless of their artistic merit (which is sometimes, evidently quite modest) each of these works unlocks a window into a time and place in history that positively brims with captivating worlds and stories. Why did Martiros Saryan decide to destroy his perfectly fine Still-Life with Banana? What led the great Gohar Fermanyan to reuse her strikingly avant-garde Pioneer Camp canvas for a different composition? What was the creative partnership like between the successful landscape painter Ohannes Alhazian and his equally talented, but now unfairly forgotten French painter-wife Alice Binét? How did Anastas Mikoyan (the Soviet minister of foreign trade) end up with a woodcut by a Norwegian artist and why did he give it to the National Gallery? The threads of inquiry here are positively endless... Ultimately, all of these questions point to the fact that artworks have complex and layered biographies that often transcend the mere fact of their artistic ambitions or intentions. The labor-intensive work of excavating and interpreting these histories, then feeding them through the machine of cultural circulation is an often politically sensitive and invisible task of curators, researchers and restorers, which gets a rare, and welcome exposure in this very uncommon exhibition. Exhibition: “Museum Works: Discoveries” Where: National Gallery of Armenia Republic Square, Yerevan Dates: Open until April 15 PICTORIAL FACE OF MATENADARAN: UNKNOWN COLLECTION The National Gallery isn’t the only museum in Yerevan dusting down its forgotten treasures. The Matenadaran has also put together a more intimate exhibition of paintings and visual artworks from its collection that had accumulated over the years as gifts. It’s an entirely incidental group of objects – a landscape by Gevorg Bashinjaghyan, Manuk Abeghyan’s portrait by Mher Abeghyan, a historically-themed composition by Jasmin Sarabian, and some other paintings along with photographs and lithographs. How and why these artworks ended up in the Matenadaran is perhaps the most interesting thing about them, because the venerable institution does not normally acquire or collect works of modern art. The exception was a recently purchased painting from the early 1950s by an unknown Armenian artist, which depicts the museum during its construction. Hovering above this rising icon of national culture is the Victory Monument with the statue of Josef Stalin still on top of it. It’s a jarring and surreal image that powerfully reminds us of the profound contradictions of the museum’s origins and Soviet culture itself, and what extraordinary historical shifts we’ve witnessed in less than eight decades. Exhibition: “Pictorial Face of Matenadaran: Unknown Collection” Where: Matenadaran 53 Mashtots Ave., Yerevan Dates: Open from January 16 PEPO AT 90 The first Armenian sound film, Hamo Beknazaryan’s Pepo, occupies a very special place in 20th century Armenian culture – both as a supremely successful adaptation of a literary classic and a superlative monument of early sound cinema. It’s one of those rare titans that helps to shoulder the entire reputation of our otherwise very uneven film history. Beknazaryan’s achievement lay in his ability to visually invoke and crystalize the entirely unique (and by then already disappeared) cultural ecosystem of Tbilisi, while making the story about an illiterate fisherman rising against his oppressors into a universal parable for the human quest of justice. Now, on the 90th anniversary of the film (it premiered in 1935), the Literature and Arts Museum – which holds the vast Beknazaryan archive – has put together an exhibition detailing the complex history of the film’s production and reception. The show takes place at the home museum of Pepo’s composer, Aram Khachaturian, who made an indelible contribution to the film’s success with his rousing score that mixed folk and epically symphonic aesthetics to great effect. It’s fascinating to observe through the documentary evidence, how efficiently Pepo crossed cultural boundaries, becoming a veritable box-office and critical mega-hit across all of the USSR and the centers of Armenian diaspora. One could safely argue that Armenian cinema is yet to repeat that same level of popular, international resonance achieved by this ground-breaking masterpiece. Exhibition: “Pepo at 90” Where: Aram Khachaturian Museum 3 Zarobyan St., Yerevan Dates: Open until March 5 BLUE ARCHIVES Turning to a more anthropological type of historical material, the exhibition Blue Archives, organized by the Cultural & Social Narratives (CSN) Lab at the Literature and Arts Museum, invites the viewer to contemplate on the significance of water “bodies” in Yerevan’s public space. The result of extensive research, which will soon be collated into yet another, undoubtedly excellent scholarly book by CSN, the show forensically excavates the various means and places through which water has ingrained itself into Yerevan’s usually dusty and often scorched body. It’s quite sad, sometimes even shocking, to see and read just how many of these rivulets, lakes, pools, springs, wells and fountains we’ve lost in the capital in the past 30 or so years. What the exhibition aims to show is the focality of publicly-accessible water spots not only in basic ecological terms, but also as community-forming nuclei. CSN Lab’s usual, transdisciplinary methodology combines architectural and ethnographic research with oral histories and contemporary poster art, weaving a compelling picture of a city fabric enlivened by its water sources and surfaces. The fact that so much of this is presented as traces of a disappeared, or disappearing reality comes as a shocking reminder about how negligent and unconcerned we (and the city authorities) have been toward this life-forming element. As the archival pictures clearly and painfully remind us, the abundant and strategic presence of water in the city means the difference between living in an environment that nourishes and a concrete jungle that slowly coils around us in a deadly embrace. Exhibition: “Blue Archives” Where: Museum of Literature and Art 1 Arami Str., Yerevan Dates: Open from February 12 SHAHEN SHAHINYAN: EXHIBITION NUMBER ONE If the number of debut solo shows over the past year is any indication, there is no shortage of younger artists entering the art scene in Armenia. But do these newcomers actually bring anything new, or are they just spinning the same old wheel? Questioning the potential of the younger generation might seem insensitive, and even callous. But if we’re to compare the hesitant and surreptitious introductions of the current debutants to the anarchic and combative way that the youngsters of the 1990s and 2000s “crashed” through the world of contemporary art, we can discern a pattern of timidity and even complacency that points to more troubling systemic issues. Take, for example, the debut solo show by ceramic sculptor and graphic artist Shahen Shahinyan, held at Tumo Studios. A recent graduate of the Fine Arts Academy, Shahinyan has been quite visible of late with his ceramic pieces that elegantly riff on motifs and forms inspired by Etruscan art, Greek black-figure pottery and Picasso’s classical period. These are exquisitely made, elegantly designed sculptural forms and vases that invoke timeless themes of beauty, eroticism and the primal joys of living through a masterfully eloquent use of line and color blocking. But despite Shahinyan’s evident talent, he shows no ambition to move beyond the decorative invocation of classical and modernist aesthetics into philosophically deeper explorations of antiquity and mythology, the conceptual dilemmas of organic materiality in the age of AI, or the political questions of sexuality that inadvertently simmer through the gracious surfaces of his ceramics and drawings. There is no challenge, nor a provocation of any kind. Instead a kind of cloying eagerness to delight the eye – and distract the mind – permeates the whole enterprise. But isn’t that the whole point of the decorative arts you may ask? Not always, and certainly not exclusively. Even in Armenia’s quite niche traditions of modern and contemporary ceramics (not to say anything about the visual arts), the boundary-pushing works of Hripsime Simonyan, Ruben Shahverdyan, Hmayak Bdeyan, Iosif Babyan, Nona Gabrielyan, Gagik Alumyan and Samvel Baghdasaryan, the medium was first and foremost about ideas intrinsically connected to the urgent issues of the day. The only way that Shahinyan’s work, like the work of so many other Gen-Z creators, expresses the anxieties of his time is the degree to which it avoids actually confronting them by indulging in the reassuring securities of consumption-friendly stylizations. Exhibition: “Exhibition Number One”, Shahen Shahinian Where: TUMO Studios Gallery 44 Arami Str., Yerevan Dates: Open from February 2 MARCOS GRIGORIAN: EMOTION It’s surprising, and frankly a little sad, that one of the more notable shows currently in Yerevan opened so quietly — without even the customary Facebook event announcement — that I stumbled upon it entirely by accident on a random visit to NPAK (Armenian Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art). Though consisting of just 15 or so drawings, the unassumingly titled Emotion is an exhibition of never-before-shown works from NPAK’s permanent collection by one of the greatest internationally renowned Armenian and Iranian artists of the 20th century, Marcos Grigorian. Alongside his ground-breaking earthworks, strikingly “archaic” carpets and unflinchingly raw paintings dedicated to the 1915 Genocide, Grigorian also produced a vast number of drawings, which have had significantly less exposure than his more experimental works. The pieces included in NPAK’s exhibition demonstrate just how superb a draughtsman he was. Created within a short timeframe in the early 1990s, during the artist’s stay in Armenia with his friends, NPAK founders Sonia and Eduard Balasanians, these loose, brisk sketches of his close circle brim with a visceral intimacy and warmth that is largely absent from his more rigorously conceptual pieces. As a figurative artist, Grigorian found a perfect balance between expressionist distortion and a glowing humanism that speaks to a deeply felt, sensory connection between the artist and his subjects. No wonder, then, that these works seem to communicate with the viewer as if in a silent but eerily perceptible conversation about friendship, love, community, and the charged atmosphere of Armenia’s first post-independence years. Exhibition: “Emotion”, Marcos Grigorian Where: NPAK 1/3 Buzand Str., Yerevan Dates: Open until March 15 ANGELA HOVAKIMYAN: UNDER THE GLEAMS The road to art for painter Angela Hovakimyan has been long and hesitant. After years spent in cultural management and theater, Hovakimyan finally made a decisive turn toward the fine arts in her 30s. It’s a risky move for anyone at any age, considering the extreme volatility and lack of support mechanisms for living artists in Armenia. But Hovakimyan’s example shows that perseverance and commitment to one’s creative drive will eventually bear fruit. Last year the artist was included in a major showcase of contemporary Armenian art in Berlin and currently she’s opening her second solo exhibition at Studio 20. Under the Gleams is a departure from her previous, more traditional painting techniques. In this instance Hovakimyan has created an ephemeral and immersive space, covering the windows of the exhibition space with semi-transparent blue material that envelops the visitor into an uncanny, “underwater” environment. This simple intervention takes the idea of painting toward its absolute conceptual limits, revealing the essence of visual art as a manipulation of light wave reflections upon various surfaces. In a sense, the artist is in direct collaboration with the natural elements, allowing the viewer to experience the transformative power of light and time in its purest form. Exhibition: “Under the Gleams”, Angela Hovakimyan Where: Studio 20 13 Hrachya Kochar Str., Yerevan Dates: Open until March 11 LEO LEO VARDANYAN: THE PATH OF THE MATTER The tenacity, productivity and resourcefulness of some of the artists really does invite awe and admiration. It seemed only yesterday that the abstract painter Leo Leo held his quite vast solo exhibition at the Yerevan Museum of Modern Art, which was dedicated to the color red. Now, he is back with a new exhibition featuring an entirely different concept that has been built-up from the scraps of his palette. Literally. After finishing off a work, every artist normally experiences a certain sense of vacuous uncertainty prior to being “refilled” with ideas for their next piece. The messy sludge of paint on the palette is the only evidence of the (usually private) creative labors that have led to this moment of emptiness. But Vardanyan is the type of artist that can make something even out of this drained state. Scrapping the placenta-like evidence from the palette, he transforms the remnants into square and circular shapes, which are then attached on a fresh canvas in color-gradated arrangements. Reminiscent of pretty gemstones, as well as something far more “organic”, the resulting paint blob grids are both attractive, and also strangely off-putting. Each one is a trace of the messy process of creation and an invitation to look at art not from the sanitized aesthetic perspective, but a forensic one. There is a morbid fascination in this explicit focus on the painting’s materiality (also documented through video), and it’s hard to think of an exhibition where an artist has so shrewdly turned the excretions of his work into the subject of art itself. The Path of Matter is a graduation project of the ICA curatorial studies school and lists all of four curators behind the helm – perhaps a sign that contemporary art curation is finally becoming a more broadly appealing profession in this country, rather than a playground for a handful of select individuals. Exhibition: “The Path of Matter”, Leo Leo Vardanyan Where: Institute of Contemporary Art 47 Avet Avetisyan Str., Yerevan Dates: Open until March 13 THE WOMEN OF YEREVAN: FEATURES OF TIME The Yerevan History Museum has an immense treasure trove of artefacts relating to Yerevan’s history, only a small part of which are on permanent display. Hence, the chance to see some rare and unique images from their splendid collection of photographs is a real boon for enthusiasts of the medium and aficionados of the capital’s past. Their latest exhibition promises a fascinating gallery of Yerevan’s women residents – both prominent and ordinary, legendary and forgotten – who have helped shape this city into what it is today, but have too often remained in the shadows. Predictably, and rather unfortunately, the show (as indicated in the exhibition text) continues to uphold the stereotypically narrow, patriarchal framing of women’s role in society as “bearers of national identity, mothers” and “protectors of the hearth.” But the discerning viewer should find evidence of a much more complex and diverse reality than these parochially binary definitions within the photographs themselves, which show women of all classes beyond their household confines, actively engaged in constructing the modernity of their country and city as workers, artists, scientists, architects, managers and politicians. Exhibition: “The Women of Yerevan: Features of Time” Where: Yerevan History Museum 1/1 Argishti Str., Yerevan Dates: Open until April 7 MARTIN MIKAELYAN: A CENTENARY EXHIBITION It’s a pity that besides Alexander Tamanyan and Rafayel Israelyan, no other modern Armenian architect has entered the public consciousness quite on the same scale. Take for example Martin Mikaelyan (1926-2026) whose centenary is being celebrated with a retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Architecture. Quite possibly the most prolific Armenian architect of the 20th century, Mikaelyan is widely admired among architectural circles as one of the figureheads of Armenian modernism. The only man to have designed an entire city in Armenia (Metsamor), Mikaelyan was a tirelessly inventive and flexible architect, working on an enormously wide register that saw him design everything from small form structures (bus stops) to massive factory complexes, sanatoriums and entire towns. Inspired by the rationalist approach of the so-called “international style” of Western modernist architecture, he profoundly influenced local customs by shifting toward purely industrial materials, geometric forms, and spatial abstraction. Rejecting the reserved modesty of scale and composition, which had typified so much of Armenia’s architectural heritage up until the 1960s, Mikaelyan pushed for an entirely technocratic vision that towers above its natural surroundings like a signpost of human dominance. Even in their currently ruined state, his sliver-form “skyscraper” sanatorium in Arzni, or the majestically alien ship style culture palace in Jermuk inspire absolute awe and wonder at the engineering complexity and grand ambition that briefly put Armenian architecture on par with the most progressive global developments of the 1970s-1980s. The fact that so much of Mikaelyan’s legacy is now neglected and under threat of disappearance is a sad reminder that modernism has remained a profoundly misunderstood and even derided phenomenon in Armenian culture, despite the considerable recent interest toward this legacy from international specialists. While this commemorative exhibition is unlikely to change such parochial local attitudes, it provides a relatively rare opportunity for the public to appreciate the immense talent and achievements of a true architectural visionary, the kinds of which Armenia hasn’t seen in the past three decades. Exhibition: “Martin Mikaelian: A Centenary Exhibition” Where: Institute of Architecture after Alexander Tamanyan 1 Melik-Adamian Str., Yerevan Dates: Open from March 3 FILMS ARARAT 73 On the one hand I’m really curious to watch Ararat 73 (titled the Golden Double in Russian distribution), the latest opus from the master of schlocky “epic” cinema, Mher Mkrtchyan. But after encountering the trailer, I feel like the experience of the actual film would be akin to a slow-motion tooth extraction à la Marathon Man, while trying to dodge a bunch of soccer balls thrown in your face. The fact that even the trailer manages to be so completely offensive in its no-holds-barred colonialist gaze on one of the most glorious moments in Armenian sports history is quite a feat, even for Mkrtchyan. This entirely Russian-backed, Russian-language production casts the Russian Egor Beroev as the Russian-Armenian trainer Nikita Simonyan, who arrives in provincial Armenia to help whip the “incompetent” local soccer team Ararat into shape in preparation for the Soviet Cup. Nobody expected them to progress very far, but in a classic underdog tale, the team triumphed, winning both the USSR championship and the USSR cup. The film seems to treat this story with all the rusty stereotype tools of the sports film genre, positioning the towering and very blond Simonyan as a kind of “bogatyr” exported from Russia to save the buffoonish (and, of course, short) Armenians from yet another sporting disgrace, while patronizingly taking in the pleasures of “ancient and sunny” Armenia. Tellingly, the caricatured antagonist of the film is none other than the Ukrainian party head Volodymyr Shcherbitsky, and the team that Ararat beats in the cup is... (drum roll) Dynamo Kyiv. Taking all this into consideration, the timing, motives and incentives behind this production become nauseatingly transparent. It is yet another example of how the Russian imperial apparatus continues to shamelessly exploit and manipulate the narratives of other nations as fodder for its vile propaganda strategy. The film does, however, have some value as a kind of diagnostic treatise on Russia’s patently earnest “savior” complex and its manifest perception of Armenia as an imbecilic but colorful “infant” that constantly needs to be disciplined and brought into the fold of the “brotherly” Empire. Screening: “Ararat 73” Where: All Movie Theatres Dates: From February 5