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Armenian Art Project Overview

The Armenian Art Project emerged as a continuation of the Armenia Art Fair, established in 2017 to address the challenges of building an art market and increasing the visibility of the Armenian art scene and the publication of A Pathway Through Armenian Modern and Contemporary Art by Iain Robertson (supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation), the project has made significant strides in fostering interest, highlighting the importance of Armenian art, and establishing meaningful collaborations.

Project Vision and Goals

The project’s primary ambition is to introduce the richness of Armenian art history to a global audience and foster a deeper engagement with Armenia’s cultural identity. It aims to rediscover and reintegrate Armenian modern and contemporary art into the international cultural dialogue, asserting its contributions to the evolution of Modernism and beyond.

Key objectives include:

• Showcasing the breadth of Armenian artistic talent, both native and diasporic, from renowned figures such as Arshile Gorky, Ara Güler, Paul Giragosian, and Martiros Saryan to lesser-known artists.
• Demonstrating the formation, development, and impact of Armenian art as a movement.
• Empowering contemporary Armenian artists by enhancing their visibility and promoting their work within the global art market.
• Addressing the omission of Armenian art from the twentieth-century cultural canon and positioning it as a vital part of the global art ecosystem.

Activities and Initiatives

The Armenian Art Project encompasses a multifaceted approach to achieving its goals, including: Research and Publications, Exhibitions, Conferences and Talks, Digital Initiatives.

Importance and Impact

The long-term impact is to establish Armenian art as a respected and dynamic part of the global art eco system . It will produce a strong reassessment of the past, current, and future reputation of practitioners of Armenian art, evaluating the aesthetic and economic value of their work, building resources for future research and curatorial practices and establishing more interconnected cross- cultural dialogue

MEET THE PROFESSIONALS AND ESSENTIAL TEAM MEMBERS DRIVING THIS PROJECT FORWARD, EACH BRINGING A WEALTH OF EXPERTISE IN THEIR RESPECTIVE AREAS

IAIN ROBERTSON
Professor in the Department of Art and Cultural Management at Hongik University, South Korea, and former Head of Art Business Studies at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Author of numerous books on the history of art and the art market.

STEPHEN MCCOUBREY
An independent curator and consultant with extensive experience in managing and curating art collections. Stephen worked for over 17 years with the UBS Art Collection, organizing museum exhibitions and publications across Europe and Asia, while providing strategic guidance on contemporary art initiatives

LUIS AFONSO 
Senior Professor at ARTIS – Institute of Art History, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon. A specialist in art history and cultural heritage, Luís focuses on bridging historical research with contemporary art discourse, fostering collaboration between academia and the international art scene.

PAU GARCIA
Founder of Domestic Streamers, a cutting-edge creative studio in Barcelona focused on innovative storytelling, digital platforms, and user-cantered design. With a background in digital media and creative direction, Pau has led numerous successful projects that merge art, technology, and culture.

ZARA OUZOUNIAN-HALPIN
Cultural producer of international art projects aimed at fostering cultural dialog, co-founder of  the Armenian Art Fair . Her previous projects include exhibitions and cultural initiatives in Moscow, Yerevan, and beyond, aimed at supporting artists and managing content and community engagement in start-ups

NAZARETH KAROYAN
Art critic and curator, Founder and Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art Yerevan. His critical writings focus on developing an institutional art system in Armenia. He has also curated numerous exhibitions in Armenia

IRINA IGITKHANYAN
International project manager who has implemented arts and cultural events in Yerevan, Geneva, Venice, Paris and New York. She produced the opera “Anoush” in Yerevan and Paris, organized a large exhibition of Armenian artists and worked on a major display of ancient manuscripts at Armenia’s national Materanadan museum.

ARMINE AGAYAN
Armine Aghayan is a project coordinator and exhibitor relations expert who has worked with the Armenia Art Fair. She is also a prolific contributor to the Wikimedia movement, creating articles and uploading photos that showcase Armenian culture, landmarks, and artists. Through her work, Armine promotes the preservation and dissemination of Armenian cultural heritage.

NATA SOKOLOVSKA
Nata Sokolovska is a marketing specialist who leverages social media and digital strategies to promote arts and cultural initiatives. With her extensive experiences Nata brings expertise social media management, and audience engagement. As a skilled photographer, she also captures compelling visuals that bring art and culture to life. Through her work, she helps increase visibility and reach for cultural projects, making them more accessible to diverse audiences.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS

The ARTIS research centre of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, providing institutional support, academic expertise and essays for the catalogue and exhibition, in particular professors Luís U. Afonso , Pedro Lapa

Institute For Contemporary Art Yerevan (ICA) providing institutional support, academic expertise in particular, curator and art critic Nazareth Karoyan

Institute of History of Georgian Art (IHGA) covering Armenian artists from Georgia and providing academic expertise and contributions on Armenian Modern Artists working in the Tiflis School, Georgia , in particular, M. Medzmariashvili -Chief Researcher

Domestic Streamers (Spain) – Specializing in digital solutions and expertise in digitization processes, led by its director and founder, Pau Garcia.

Exploring and promoting Armenian art across time, geographies, and generations.

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Armenian Modern & Contemporary Art (AMCA). All rights reserved © 2026.

AMCA is operated by the ARTmenia Foundation, a non-profit organization registered in the Republic of Armenia.

This presentation examines the question of national identity among artists of the Tbilisi school of painting of both Georgian and Armenian origin. It focuses on professional artists Mose Toidze and Grigol Sharbabchyan, as well as self-taught painters Niko Pirosmani and Karapet Grigoryants.

A comparative analysis of their works reveals, on the one hand, shared themes and motifs, and on the other, differences in aesthetic and artistic perception. These differences, among artists living within the same geographical and social environment, demonstrate the resilience of long-standing national traditions in both cultures.

Abstract: Charles Sirató’s Dimensionist Manifesto (1936) created a network linking the international avant-garde, including Ervand Kotchar and António Pedro. Grounded in the theory of relativity and an interpretation of the fourth dimension, it extended this idea across literature, painting, sculpture, and their transgressions. These arts were expanded upon by adding a new dimension to the traditional ones. While Kotchar’s “painting in space” and Pedro’s dimensional poems viewed dimensional increase based on concepts of simultaneity and duration, Sirató emphasized a scientifically informed, material objectification as the basis for new perception. Together, these perspectives define a key transformation of the art object in the avant-garde in the 1930s.


Leon (Serge) Tutundjian: A Moment in Time: The Paris avant garde in transition amid a multiplicity of theories and practices.

Between 1925 and 1930, Paris functioned as a cauldron of ideas and experimental practices across film, poetry, sculpture, painting, and philosophy. At the centre of these developments were urgent questions of space and metaphysics-above all, the relationship between objects and the role of the viewer in the realisation of a work of art.

Within this field, Leon (Serge) Tutundjian emerges as a key figure. His work destabilises form, collapsing the boundary between object and perception and requiring the viewer’s active participation. In doing so, he anticipates the logic of Tachism-not as a style, but as a mode of thought in which the artwork is realised through perception.

Alongside Kochar and Kakabadze, Tutundjian exhibited with the Parisian avant- garde, contributing to a shift from form to experience. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 curtailed this moment of experimentation, forcing artists and markets into retreat. Tutundjian left Parris soon after, his trajectory abruptly interrupted.

This brief period-following the cultural intensity of Weimar Berlin-proved decisive in shaping modernism. Though now largely forgotten, Tutundjian was not peripheral, but integral to this redefinition of the artwork as a site of unstable meaning and viewer realisation.

This presentation explores how the unique institutional model of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe supports media art across its entire lifecycle: From ideation and production through exhibition to preservation and restoration. Central to this approach is empowering artists through the support infrastructure and expertise of its people, integrating cutting-edge tools into an ecosystem that bridges artistic production, maintenance, and long-term conservation of
media art works.

What happens when a museum cannot honestly say what a work is, who made it, or whether what you are seeing matches what was first shown? This talk argues that digital instability is not a technical problem awaiting a solution — it is the underlying condition of cultural work today. Moving through three interlocking registers — technical, cognitive, and authorial — it proposes framing as care as a curatorial practice adequate to the present: one that renders uncertainty legible rather than resolving it, and that holds institutions accountable for the systems they host, commission, and call art.

This presentation explores how and why the ArtNexus project integrates international expertise with local governance to foster a resilient and democratic cultural sector in Armenia. By examining our multi-stakeholder approach to policy development and institutional support, we highlight how collaborative program models can bridge the gap between global standards and local artistic needs while maintaining respect for cultural differences.

This theme looks at cross-border initiatives, artist collectives, and collaborative projects that connect Georgian and Armenian artists and cultural practitioners. In reaction to common histories of empire, conflict, migration, and underfunded cultural infrastructures, it emphasises the practical, ethical, and political aspects of cooperation. It explores how such partnerships negotiate national narratives and conflict legacies while addressing networked practices, such as co-productions, artist-run spaces, residencies, exhibitions and digital platforms.