Pawel's blog on Rhiz.eu

One Week in Yerevan: Art, Politics, and Sexuality
by Pawel Leszkowicz

Summer in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is very hot (30-35 °C in the shadow), and yet the week of late July early August 2008 was even hotter - with cool events. In the evening of the 2nd of August a group of people gathered in the garden of Utopiana Association for the opening of a women’s art exhibition, Coming To You To Not Be With You, organized by WOW (Women-oriented Women) Armenian artists network. It is 7 p.m. and the heat is still enormous. The curators, art historian Angela Harutyunyan and a writer Shushan Avagyan are opening the show with an introduction emphasizing the feminist and queer agenda of the show. The art expresses the experiences and cultures of straight, bisexual and lesbian Armenian women artists living in Armenia and in diasporas scattered all over the world. The lesbian element of the project is very important, since it is also a coming-out manifesto in a very conservative country. [. . .]

Read more here.

More photos from the exhibit Day 1

I'm here but I'm not an artist

Selected videos

Coming to You To Not Be With You
Video Program
04.08.2008

The program screened within the framework of Coming to You To Not Be With You in Yerevan, comprised of video works by Armenian contemporary women artists produced since 2000. The works shared a concern with the issues of the body and sexuality in the specific experiences of Armenian women artists. They articulate the body as sites for contestation of identity construction.

The aim of the program was to historicize WOW's activities as well as contexualize them within the larger representational and identity discourses in Armenia.




Karine Matsakyan, Untitled, Video, 2002, excerpt



Lusine Chergeshtyan, Untitled, Video, 2007


Sona Abgarian, Untitled, Video, 2003




Astghik Melkonyan, 1:10, video, 2008
I was supposed to leave 1min and 10 sec video. had to cut it for logistic reasons



Tsomak, Dance, video, 2004

For some reason I don't have Lusine's work of 2004 (Bang, Bang) on the dvd. Lusya, can you add a small excerpt from it? Thanks! Angela

gazeta.ru's blurb on our project

21:16 (5 августа)

В Армении впервые прошла публичная акция лесбиянок

Накануне в Еревне впервые прошла акция лесбиянок, организованная Ресурсным центром женщин Армении.
В рамках акциии была организована фотовыставка и видеопоказ, где была представлена история работы женщин с общественностью, не воспринимающей нетрадиционную сексуальную ориентацию.
Кроме того женщины нетрадиционной ориентации предстваили отчет о работе в защиту окружающей среды и разработках в области садоводства. В отличие от организуемых зарубежом гей-парадов, здесь не афишировались атрибуты сексуальной ориентации. // "Газета.Ru", Ереван

http://www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2008/08/05/n_1252514.shtml

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asya's and my performance pieces

asya

she cuts out two women - embracing - hollow on white - there is a passage from the offices to the garden - a bridge of some sorts - she places the stenciled women on the passage and uses a sieve to sprinkle flour on them - it's snowing in august - it's august 3rd, 2008, A HISTORIC MOMENT ------>->----->>->--->





but then history is always rewritten and she peels off the paper from the concrete – the women’s silhouette is no longer confined in white - they ARE white – and free – and now they flow - people walk through the passage to the “stage” area where i’m reading from “zarubyan’s women” and their white footprints appear in every corner of the garden, the underpasses, the streets, the city.

opening & intros

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"galis em motd, vor hetd chlinem"

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the exhibit (part 3)

adrineh ադրինե

fragmentation ֆրագմենտացում. a woman with many bodies կին տարբեր մարմիններով. different women within one body տարբեր կանայք մի մարմնով. you see me but do you see me in my multitudes դու ինձ տեսնում ես, բայց արդյոք տեսնում ես ինձ իմ բազմության մեջ? like the multitudes of leaves, like the branches of a tree reaching out for the light տերևների պես բազմություն, ճյուղերի նման ձգտող դեպի լույսը ------->---->->





alina ալինա

stilettos բարձրակրունկ կոշիկներ որ սեղմում են նրանց ոտքերը that squeeze, շնչահեղձ անում choke, բթացնում make you numb, yet at the same time the heel is like a fragile delicate penis ու միևնույն ժամանակ կրունկն ասես լինի մի նուրբ ու փխրուն, բարալիկ մի առնանդամ, ճզմված ոտքերի տակ being crushed underfoot. երկակի տեսողություն. երկու պարան որ քաշում են տարբեր ուղղություններով a double vision. two ropes pulling one in two different directions ---------->-->->

My only two photos from the opening.
Im unetsats 2 lusankary cucahandesi bacumits.
Angela

the exhibit (part 2)

tsomak

DO IT YOURSELF!! mekenanere surum en tsomaki video-um. nrank shtapum en, nrank piti hasnen tegh (npatakin - vor npatakin?) nrank surum en ainkan arag vor chen nkatum knoje vor poghotsi mejteghum kangnats e, dzerkin inch vor ban ka, "ara inkd" steghtsir inkd mi spasir vor tegh tan vorovhetev chen ta kantsnen ko vrayov ko ashxatanki vrayov ko vrayov kantsnen u chen nkati INKD ARA -->---------->->----->------->>->>>>---->>>>--->>>

the exhibit (part 1)

these are photos taken by sarah ------>---->>--->-------------->



lucine & arpi's installation





a room with old soviet wallpaper, an old piano that desperately needs tuning, two broken windows, an ancient magnetic tape player, a video of two women playing football with a watermelon in a pool. parts of the wallpaper is reapplied, the patterns are changed, deliberately (and inconspicuously) made into irregular patterns, the kinds of irregularities you look for when as a child you're staring at the wall, while trying to fall asleep, tracing the patterns with your eyes and matching the lines in symmetrical forms, etc. only a keen eye can detect the irregularities. you can find them only when you look for them, when you know that they are there – the subversive forms, the lines that are discontinuous, the paths that lead nowhere, the patterns that are not symmetrical. the installation is called “my mother’s room.”

and now, a quote from gertrude stein's "what are master-pieces":

"all this sounds awfully complicated but it is not complicated at all, it is just what happens. any of you when you write you try to remember what you are about to write and you will see immediately how lifeless the writing becomes that is why expository writing is so dull because it is all remembered, that is why illustration is so dull because you remember what somebody looked like and you make your illustration look like it. the minute your memory functions while you are doing anything it may be very popular but actually it is dull. and that is what a master-piece is not, it may be unwelcome but it is never dull. and so then why are there so few of them. there are so few of them because mostly people live in identity and memory that is when they think. they know they are they because their little dog knows them, and so they are not an entity but an identity. and being so memory is necessary to make them exist and so they cannot create master-pieces. [...] it is not extremely difficult not to have identity but it is extremely difficult the knowing not having identity. one might say it is impossible but that it is not impossible is proved by the existence of master-pieces which are just that. they are knowing that there is no identity and producing while identity is not. THAT IS WHAT A MASTER-PIECE IS. and so we do know what a master-piece is and we also know why there are so few of them. everything is against them. everything that makes life go on makes identity and everything that makes identity is of necessity a necessity."

chalk figures

this was the day before the event. we wanted to have images of (odd / queer) (արտառոց / տարօրինակվող) women holding hands in strange positions . . we ended up having (inadvertently) self-portraits and portraits of the women in the exhibit.





զարուբյանի կանայք / zarubyan's women