2012—

Exhibition for the 8th Gyumri International Bienniale, Armenia
September 14 – 28th, 2012
Gyumri State Academy of Fine Arts
Opening: September 14th, 15:00

Artists: Benik Karapetyan, Liana Khachatryan, and Ernest Voskanyan
Curator: Marianna Hovhannisyan

Supported by: Armenian Open University, Dept. of Fine Arts Gyumri Center of Contemporary Art, and  Gyumri State Academy of Fine Arts.

This project has been developed through a series of ongoing discussions about the role of contemporary art education in Armenia.

The 2012–  exhibition was developed over a year through an initiative of Marianna Hovhannisyan in collaboration with the Dept. of Fine Arts at Armenian Open University, for the Gyumri International Biennale and their theme “2012”. Both in the choice of outcomes and method, 2012– considers the Biennale’s theme, reflecting on “2012” as a contemporary moment, by working with a young generation of artists, recent graduates from the Department of Fine Arts. This led to a project outline for realizing works through the narratives of family history and by that to articulate the Biennale theme. While personal narratives suggest initiating passages from a familiar, secure space, the scale and content of the exhibition are greater, connecting to history, memory, identity and language, where the year “2012” is isolated neither from past nor future.

The 2012– exhibition presents a point of contact between three different art institutional spaces, each with their perspective and histories: Gyumri International Biennale and AOU Department of Fine Arts, which represent two different, direct outcomes from the 1990s artist-initiatives, and Gyumri State Academy of Fine Arts that provides classical art education. This point of contact proposes to observe, rethink and imagine what kinds of critical tools or outlooks arts education provides for a younger generation in 2012. It offers to understand their position as not only registering and reacting to the contemporary moment – 2012 – but drawing their perspectives out from and producing the space of an ongoing relation between knowledge and research-based practice.

Download Exhibition Brochure [ENG].
Download Exhibition Brochure [ARM].