A MAINSTREAM HOME FOR ALTERNATIVE ART IN ARMENIA
The New York Times
Oct 16 2013
By ELIZABETH ZACH
Published: October 16, 2013
YEREVAN, Armenia – Every weekend at the Vernissage Market here,
locals and tourists survey handsomely woven Persian rugs, vintage
Soviet military medals, samovars, chess sets and intricately carved
jewelry boxes. It’s like a step back in time to a Silk Road bazaar.
In contrast, just across the street sits a staid and humble building,
designed as an auditorium when the Cold War was drawing to a close
and then, for a time afterward, left vacant. In front, appropriately,
is Yervand Kochar’s towering 1959 sculpture “Melancholy,” seemingly
serving as a testament to the political and economic crises that have
convulsed Armenia since the collapse of Communism in the region nearly
a quarter century ago.
The statue, however, also gestures promisingly to the building itself,
which since 1995 has housed the Norar Pordzarakan Arvesti Kentovon, or
Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art. Founded by Armenian
emigres to the United States and hailed by many as the epicenter of
Armenia’s culture revolution and renaissance, it hosts exhibits by
young, avant-garde artists and offers concerts and performances in
its large auditorium.
Among other endeavors, artists at the center initiated and organized
Armenia’s participation at the Venice Biennale in 1995, and continued
to do so for eight years. And the center’s founders are set to
introduce an independent study program for graduates in the arts
and architecture, modeled on a similar one at the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York.
“It used to be that many of our young artists would exhibit their
work in underground galleries,” said Sevada Petrossian, the center’s
coordinator of architectural events. “We like to think of the center
as a mainstream place for alternative art.”
For a city of roughly one million, Yerevan’s artistic standing and
cachet have been notable in the past century. In 1972, the Soviet
Union established its first Museum of Modern Art here. The city’s
National Art Gallery showcases the third-largest collection of European
masters in the former Soviet Union, including works by Rodin, Rubens
and Tintoretto. And Yerevan itself exudes a distinct bygone elegance,
with its softly hued 19th-century tuff stone edifices that line its
leafy boulevards.
Aside from the center and its focus on experimental art, there is
also the Cafesjian Center for the Arts. Opened in November 2009, it
holds an extensive collection of contemporary and glass art, as well
as works by Marc Chagall and John Altoon, who was of Armenian descent.
And yet, despite Yerevan’s artistic fervor, when Edward Balassanian and
his wife, Sonia, set out to establish the contemporary and experimental
art center, they expected – and encountered – resistance.
“While we believe in academic education, we also promote breaking
away from it once study is completed,” Mr. Balassanian said. “Those
within certain art circles, namely some artists schooled during the
Soviet era and most of the members of the Painters Union of Armenia,
still either don’t understand the center’s motives and/or vocally
reject its projects.”
The Balassanians are part of Armenia’s global diaspora of eight
million. They were both born and raised in Iran, fleeing the country in
1979 after the Islamic revolution and eventually settling in New York.
But when Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in
1991, Mr. Balassanian, an architect and urban planner, and Mrs.
Balassanian, a painter and poet who has exhibited at major venues
in the United States and Europe, including The Project Room of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, were eager to return.
After the Islamic revolution, Mrs. Balassanian began concentrating
her art on cultural, political and social suppression, and she felt
a natural calling toward Armenia. In 1992, she organized her first
contemporary art exhibit in Yerevan, including her work and that of
eight other artists, culminating in the center’s official opening in
1994. She and her husband gradually introduced video and multimedia art
to the Armenian art scene, as well as photography as its own art genre.
Not everyone in Yerevan has been receptive. Among those is Anatoly
Avetyan, who began his artistic career in the 1970s and has gone
on to command strong sales of his art, which includes metal works,
paintings and sculptures now owned by current and past presidents of
Russia, Finland and Germany, not to mention George W. Bush.
“Much of the best generation of artists has already passed away,”
he said. Rather than reinvent the wheel, he said, he and his
contemporaries are pushing for a larger building to house the works
now at Yerevan’s Museum of Modern Art.
In response, Mr. Balassanian says the establishment of the Museum of
Modern Art in 1972 was indeed “a daring act,” and he draws a parallel
between it and the center he co-founded.
“It was an expression of resilience and audacity under politically
repressive conditions,” he said, noting that his center had
“institutionalized the concept and role of the curator as a distinct
profession, something that didn’t exist previously in Armenia, as
such tasks had been performed by government-appointed managers.”
With poverty, corruption and a weak democracy continuing to bedevil
Armenia, the center’s artists say they seek to tether their work to
social and political issues alongside questions of national identity
and culture. The center organized an exhibition in 2007 called “Yerevan
Crisis,” for example, which focused on social problems resulting
from rapid growth, a spontaneous boom in high-rise construction and
escalating property prices.
This issue was also at play in 1997, when Gagik Ghazareh, a film
student at the time, was hard-pressed to find a place to screen his
work. Despite Yerevan’s growth, there is only one operating cinema
in the city, and he did not feel it fit his alternative genre, he
said. A friend suggested contacting the center, which offered him a
screening room.
“One year later, I was invited by the center to chair their cinema
department,” said Mr. Ghazareh, who joined in 1999, later becoming
the center’s artistic director and has since gone on to develop annual
festivals in Yerevan for film and theater.
Vahram Akimian, another young filmmaker who joined the center’s staff
in 2005, is now the program director for the “One Shot” International
Short Film Festival, which has partners in Italy, the Netherlands,
Russia and Slovakia, among other countries. He was also the center’s
associate curator of the Armenian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in
2009. Today, he is the center’s director of video, cinema and theater.
“Our government speaks of a ‘national culture’ or ‘national art,”‘
said Mr. Akimian one afternoon at the center as he looked across
the street at the bustling Vernissage Market. “But there’s still no
agreement today on what that is.”
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/arts/international/a-mainstream-home-for-alternative-art-in-armenia.html?_r=2&