“AND THE BORDERS BECOME BRIDGES”
Curators: Alain Berland and Varduhi Kirakosyan
GALERIE D’ARCHI PARIS-MALAQUAIs: Open every day from 2 pm to 7 pm
"MOB (MILITARY MOBILIZATION)"
Photography
Through this documentary series, created during his service in the army of Artsakh in 2016, Areg Balayan reflects on the disasters of war through the lens of both the photographer and the soldier. The camera becomes an ambivalent instrument, capable of creating an emotional distance between the event and the viewer, while reproducing the brutality of the world.
"DEAR ARMENIA"
Painting
Through an artistic practice nourished by psychology, philosophy, and theology, Narek Barseghyan uses various mediums—digital paintings, oil canvases mixed with text, and watercolors—to develop his own visual language. These Armenian landscapes, although neither photographic interpretations nor topographical, offer an authentic expression of sensitive "portraits" of conflict areas.
"UNTITLED"
Painting
Sona Khachikyan practices installation, performance, drawing, and painting. Her research focuses on representations of sexuality. She presents several enigmatic canvases that hint at the violence one body can exert on another body.
"THE INVISIBLES"
Sculpture
The works of Sasun Margaryan question the ambivalent nature of being human and the attempts to define the self in relation to the other. In "The Invisibles", he raises the issue of the representation of minorities within Armenian society. His glass boxes frame and obscure the human figure while bringing it to light, almost reproducing the way society conceals and marginalizes certain individuals.
"VISIONARIES"
Sculpture
Garush Melkonyan uses lithophany, a precursor to cinematic techniques, on a previously invisible porcelain plate. Composed of various pre-existing photographs that form a series finding coherence in similar bodily attitudes, it creates a mise en abyme of the presented images.
"UNTITLED"
Drawing
A transdisciplinary artist and performer, Araks Sahakyan articulates her research around questions such as memory, uprooting, and migration; individual and collective history in its possible translations. Her aesthetic repertoire draws from the popular culture of the 1990s and the legacy of her own experience shared between multiple countries.