May 1, 2026
It turns out that the government of Armenia has a special “love” for carpets, on one Vardavar holiday they allocate millions of drams and wash carpets on Baghramyan avenue, on the other they paint carpets in the central streets of Yerevan.
Back in 2019, on the Vardavar holiday, in Baghramyan Avenue, near the National Assembly, CP deputies organized a “carpet washing” event, for which, of course, they wasted a lot of money. On that occasion, KP deputy Lusine Badalyan said that “she likes to wash carpets, although she will not wash them that day, moreover, the Vardavar holiday is another opportunity to use and propagate the thousand-year-old Armenian culture, and the public should go, see and be proud.”
Almost a year after this “carpet washing” ceremony, in 2020 and beyond, however, the CPs changed their position dramatically towards carpets and national culture in general. After the 44-day war in Artsakh, Azerbaijan occupied Armenian Shushi, destroying the thousand-year-old Armenian culture, taking away Armenian carpets, some of which the director of Shushi’s carpet museum managed to save and transport to Armenia, to keep those saved carpets until today. power anywhere did not allocate. Probably, Nikol Pashinyan and his teammates are afraid to use the word “Artsakh” and to allocate a place to store the carpets saved from Artsakh.
On April 25, when Nikol Pashinyan closed several streets of the capital and celebrated “Citizen’s Day” with a barbecue party, graffiti carpets were painted at the intersection of Abovyan-Pushkin streets, near the “Alexander” hotel, probably to welcome the participants of the 8th summit of the European Political Community to be held in Yerevan on May 4. Hopefully, Nikol Pashinyan, after welcoming his European colleagues, will also tell them about the oldest Armenian carpets left in Artsakh, which became the spoils of Azerbaijani soldiers after occupying Shush.
Anyway, it should also be noted that although the government “loves” Armenian carpets, for example, in 2018, when the Chancellor of Germany arrived in Armenia, he was greeted with a Persian carpet, the experts warned about this.
When we filmed the graphite carpet, it was not yet complete, one part was finished, the other part was not, probably they will finish it before the Europeans come. The area of the graphite carpet is sealed with tape.
The author of carpet graffiti is “Gandz Graffiti” company. We learned from Instagram that the Dubai-based team has been creating works of graffiti, mural art and contemporary street culture for years. Their works have been presented in various countries in collaboration with Red Bull, Adobe, Dubai Municipality, as well as a number of festivals and cultural events in Saudi Arabia, Armenia and elsewhere.
Details in the video of 168.am
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Direct link to this article: https://www.armenianclub.com/2026/05/02/will-nikol-pashinyan-who-welcomes-the-europeans-with-a-carpet-talk-about-what-was-stolen-in-artsakh-and-not/