Contemporary Art and Placemaking: Exploring the New Dynamics of Art Scenes in Armenia and Beyond

Talk and panel with Nairi Khatchadourian

Speakers: Nairi Khatchadourian, Banu Karaca, Nejbir Erkol

Saturday, September 21, 17:00

In recent years, independent contemporary art initiatives in Armenia have emerged as vibrant catalysts for placemaking and community engagement, both in the capital and in regional areas. These initiatives have taken on institutional responsibilities, stepping in to support contemporary research and production in the absence of a robust institutional ecosystem.

In her talk, art historian and curator Nairi Khatchadourian will explore these new dynamics in Armenia’s contemporary art scene. By presenting the various curatorial projects she has undertaken with AHA collective, an independent research-based artistic practice she founded in 2019, she will delve into the transformative power of contemporary art in revitalising heritage and fostering a sense of place. She will emphasize the potential role of art in critically engaging with the past and reshaping narratives with a deep care for people, places, and practices.

The talk will be followed by a panel discussion with anthropologist Banu Karaca and artist Nejbir Erkol, which will further explore the intersections of artistic production and placemaking in the wider region, and how these practices contribute to a deeper understanding of community and heritage through diverse narratives.

The talk will be in English and registration is not required to participate.

Nairi Khatchadourian is an art historian and curator born and raised in Paris. She relocated to Armenia in 2015, and managed institutional projects in museums in Yerevan and Armenia’s regions. By bringing together artists, photographers, architects, designers, and researchers under the roof of AHA collective, which she founded in 2019, Khatchadourian has been engaged in rethinking exhibition formats and mediation tools to open up the contemporary artistic landscape to different audiences in Armenia. With a curatorial approach emphasizing the importance of placemaking, Khatchadourian contributes in revitalizing museums, public spaces, and heritage sites in Armenia. She has edited a dozen catalogs and collective monographs on Armenian contemporary art, design, and cultural heritage. Her newly opened AHA collective apartment nestled in the heart of Yerevan functions both as a project space and a gallery.

Banu Karaca works at the intersection of political anthropology and critical theory, art, aesthetics, and cultural policy, museum and feminist memory studies. She has published on freedom of expression in the arts, the visualisation of gendered memories of war and political violence, visual literacy, and restitution. She is the author of The National Frame: Art and State Violence in Turkey and Germany (Fordham University Press, 2021), and co-editor of Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University Press, 2019). Karaca has been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council for “Beyond Restitution: Heritage, (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Knowledge,” a research group she directs at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. Her current research examines how art dispossessed in episodes of state violence against non-Muslims in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish republic has shaped the knowledge production on (post-)Ottoman heritage and the writing of art history.

Nejbir Erkol (b. Nusaybin/Mardin) completed her undergraduate degree at Mardin Artuklu University and obtained her master’s from the Hacettepe University Fine Arts Institute’s Painting Department. Erkol participated in numerous international group exhibitions and research programmes. As an artist working on the notion of the precariat, her practice spans painting, installation, performance and video. It is possible to observe concepts of fragility, vulnerability, pain and trauma in her works due to the proximity of her hometown to border regions. Erkol, who participated in Flux I bell sRTUcTURs (Germany 2024), Spaces of Culture (Paris, 2023), Festival SACRe – Gaîte-Lyrique (Paris, 2023) and the 5th Mardin Biennial (Mardin, 2022), was also one of the winners of the 2023 Prince Claus Seed Award. Erkol recently opened a solo exhibition titled Making A Land at the Goethe Institute Galeri Vitrin in Ankara.

This event is made possible within the framework of the Support to the Armenia-Turkey Normalisation Process (ATNP).

Image: the launch of the Point of Reference contemporary red carpet collection, 2024 Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival, artist: Davit Kochunts, curator: Nairi Khatchadourian, carpet collection edited by AHA collective, photo credit: GAIFF.