Armenity/Hayoutioun, edited by Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg

La Poésie Arménienne, by Vahé Godel

Letters from Lost Paradise, by Hera Büyüktaşcıyan

Treasures, by Silvina Der-Meguerditchian

A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas, by Aikaterini Gegisian

MEMORY Streetlights of Memory – A Stand by Memorial,  2010 / 2015, by Melik Ohanian

DATCHA Project — Abandoned Black Book, by Melik Ohanian

 

 

 

 

Armenity/Hayoutioun

Edited by Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg

 

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition is  published by Skira, Milan and contains color reproductions and texts in English and Armenian. A first part dedicated to forewords, introduction and curatorial texts is followed by a section focusing on the work of the artists. The 16 artists in the exhibition have participated personally in the construction of the catalogue, in writing about their own work, in choosing appropriate art writers to analyze and dialogue with their work. International art critics and writers such as Ruben Arevshatyan, Cecile Bourne, Ginevra Bria, Adam Budak, David Kazanjian, Berthold Reiss, Gabi Scardi, Hrag Vartanian have written in the catalogue. The catalogue comprehends also a section dedicated to essays by New York-based art historian and independent curator Neery Melkonian, by London-based art writer andIbraaz editor Stephanie Bailey, and by Valentina Calzolari, Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of Geneva.

 

 

Pages: 177

Dimensions: 28 x 21

Coloured pictures: 80

Languages: English, Armenian

Publisher: Skira Editori, Milan

 

Forewords by

 

HE, Mrs. Hasmik Poghosyan

Minister of Culture ofthe Republic of Armenia

 

Padre Elia Kilaghbian

General Abbot of the Mekhitarist Congregation in San Lazzaro degli Armeni

 

Jean-Pierre Claveranne

President Fondazione Bullukian, Lione

 

Mr. Ruben Vardanyan and Mrs. Veronika Zonabend Family Foundation

 

Introduction by

 

Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg

Curator and commissioner of Armenity /Hayoutioun and Director of ART for the World

 

 

Interview

 

Neither victory or defeat..but the best possible participation...

Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg in dialogue with Ginevra Bria, Venice, February 2015

 

 

Artists

 

Haig Aivazian

            text by the artist

 

Nigol Bezjian

            text by the artist

 

Anna Boghiguian

            text by the artist

 

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan

            text by the artist

 

Silvina Der-Meguerditchian

            essay by Berthold Reiss

 

Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas

            text by the artists

 

Mekhitar Garabedian

            essay by Adam Budak

 

Aikaterini Gegisian

            essay by David Kazanjian

 

Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi

            essay by Gabi Scardi

 

Aram Jibilian

            essay by Hrag Vartanian

 

Nina Katchadourian

           essay by David Kazanjian

 

Melik Ohanian

            essay by Jean-Christophe Royoux

 

Mikayel Ohanjanyan

            essay by Ginevra Bria

 

Rosana Palazyan

            text by the artist

           

Sarkis

            essay by Ruben Arevshatyan

 

Hrair Sarkissian

            essay by Cecile Bourne

 

Essays

 

Stephanie Bailey

Art writer and managing Editor Ibraaz, London

 

Neery Melkonian

Independend curator, co-founder ofBlind Date Project, New York

 

Valeria Calzolari Bouvier

Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of Geneva

 

 

 

 

 

La Poésie Arménienne

Vahé Godel

 

La Poésie Arménienne is a book of poetry, published to accompany the catalogue of the exhibition, and comprising the work of 12 Armenian poets born after the Armenian Genocide and the Russian Revolution. The poems are by Armenian poets such as:

G. Djandjiguian, Barouïr Sevak, Zahrad, Armen Djanian, Slavig Chiloyan, Henrig Etoyan, Artem Haroutiounian, Armen Mardirossian, Hovhannès Krikorian, Ikna Sareaslan, Violette Krikorian, Mariné Petrossian, and have been translated into French by the prominent Swiss-Armenian poet Vahé Godel.

The book, published by Skira, Milan, includes an initial essay by the author, translated in Armenian, as well as a small selection of the poems in Armenian.

 

 

In the introduction the author explains:

“From a generational perspective, the poets gathered in this book are divided roughly into three categories: 1) those who were born in the decade after the Genocide and the Bolshevik Revolution, during which took place a vast migration towards the South and especially towards the West, and which, on the other hand, turned into the Soviet Republic of Armenia; 2) those who were born during World War II; 3) sensibly younger, two women poets born in Armenia in the Brezhnev era, whose debut coincided consequently with the earthquake of 7 December 1988 ... the fall of the communist regime ... the beginning of the conflict with Azerbaijan ... and the birth of the independent Republic of Armenia”.

 

“The reading of these poems should show how, despite the diversity of their destinies, wherever they were born or they lived, in Yerevan, Istanbul or Paris, all these poets remain profoundly Armenian: not only because they used the same language and that they expressed themselves in two idioms ​​that somehow represent the two provinces of a same kingdom (Armenian of the East and the West), but also because they are the heirs of a single treasury, whose millenary origins continue to secretly foster their poetry ...; and on the other hand, each of these poets express, in his own way, the man of today, in its dimension all together European and universal”. 

 

 

Biography of the author

Vahé Godel lives in Geneva, where he was born in 1931. His mother, Méliné Papazian, a native of Bursa, was deported with her family to Konia, during the genocide of 1915. His father, the Saussurian linguist Robert Godel, taught in the 1920s, in Istanbul at the French Lycée Galataseray. He learned Turkish and later the Armenian -and married before returning to his hometown. Vahé Godel has often travelled to Armenia as soon as 1969. In 1973, he taught at the State University of Yerevan. The Ministry of Culture awarded him in 1990 with the Hovhannes Tumanyan Prize, and in 2001, he was awarded with the Moses of Khoren Medal. Author of around thirty books (poems, novels, essays), he has translated and published many Armenian poets, past and contemporary (including V. "The Armenian poetry from the fifth century to the present " Ed. La Difference, Paris, 2006). He is an honorary member of the Armenian Writers' Union.

 

Letters from Lost Paradise

By Hera Büyüktaşcıyan

 

Alongside with the work presented in the show, the artist will presented a book titled “Letters from Lost Paradise”, a story that focuses on the journey of three different time tables, three different protagonists, three  languages and four different locations. The protagonists are Mhitar Sebastatsi, Lord Byron and Hera (the artist herself); the languages: Armenian, English, Turkish; whereas the locations are: Sebaste, Constantinople, Peleponese and Venice.

 

The story is based on notions such as creating- preserving- loss and exploration. The journey begins with Mechitar Sebastatsi's ideal of creating one of the most important educational center that is not only a theological school but an important hub that is focused on Armenian language and culture and moves on with Lord Byron's attempt to learn Armenian as a stranger and finally the artist herself who has graduated from Mechitarian Scool in Istanbul who tries to explore and reveal something that has been long lost. 

It is the voyage of time, language, culture, utopias, memory and mental topographies. 

 

 

Treasures

By Silvina Der-Meguerditchian

 

On the occasion of the Armenity, the artist Silvina Der-Meguerditchian will present an artist book, containing 10 recipes against eye illness, taken from the booklet of the artist’s great grand mother, that will be accompanied by images of Aintab and of the grandmother herself.

The book is made with collages, digital images, ink, punched paper and gold foil. It is composed by 20 unbounded pages in a folder, 42 cm wide and 18 cm high.

 

 

A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas

By Aikaterini Gegisian

 

Limited edition of 100 individual signed copies plus 20 artist's proofs

Hardcover

17 x 24 cm

160 pages

 

A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas is a collage and artist’s book project based on an extensive collection of photographic albums from Soviet Armenia, Turkey and Greece dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. The albums sometimes act as a documentation of changing landscapes and other times as tourist catalogues which function as nation-building mechanisms: they photographically narrate an image of each nation. 

 

 

MEMORY
Streetlights of Memory – A Stand by Memorial,  2010 / 2015

By Melik Ohanian

In the frame of the presentation of Streetlights of Memory – A Stand by Memorial 2010 / 2015 by Melik Ohanian for the Armenian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial, a publication will be edited in order to witness and question the complicated history of the project. Using the elements produced by the artists for the international competition (2010) as a starting point, the book will put together a whole set of information, documents, illustrations as well as other elements that will reveal and describe the issues raised by the project from its very beginning until the complex situation it faces today.

 

DATCHA Project — Abandoned Black Book

By Melik Ohanian

Abandoned Black book is based on the Datcha Project started in 2005 by Melik Ohanian. The artist declares a house in Armenia as “A Zone of No Production” where he invites every year a random group of people to share the temporality of the place. In the frame of his participation in the National Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 56th Venice Biennale, the artist organizes a Special Session in the site. The exchanges and the conversations recorded during this session will be transcribed and edited into a book. This publication is then consciously abandoned by the artist in public and private places in Venice.