Ambiguous Boundaries

Contemporary Art from Armenia

Three artists from Armenia tell of the difficulties of surviving in times of social uncertainty. At the invitation of KulturKontakt Austria, the Armenian artist and curator Arpine Tokmajyan curated the exhibition “Ambiguous Boundaries”, which presents works by Karine Matsakyan, Mher Azatyan and Karen Alekyan.

Vernissage: Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 7 p.m.
Exhibition duration: 19 January - 24 February 2012
Mon. to Fri., 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. 
Location: Galerie ArtPoint,      
Universitätsstraße 5, 1010 Vienna

Photos of the vernissage on flickR

The exhibited works focus on the question of how to establish and assert oneself in a world in which the value system is rapidly changing. The artists’ experience is based on their homeland Armenia. All three of them lived part of their remembered lives during the Soviet era. Their works present the situation of their country and its inhabitants since the dissolution of the Soviet Union about 20 years ago. “It was a time in which art, culture, social life and almost everything else was ‘played’ according to scenarios dictated by the state. At that time, the boundaries were many, rigid and unambiguous,” the curator relates.

However, the breakdown of the Communist system still did not bring the hoped-for freedom and stability – either in the economy, in culture, in the arts or in the academic and scientific world. “Many problems that Armenia is facing today,” says Arpine Tokmayan, “are universal for all post-Soviet countries, although the specifics and intensities vary: the weak free market economy, social instability, the absence of any system of values shaped within and by the country itself – a “closed space” in turmoil with many ambiguous boundaries. And it is not easy to find a starting point from which to exit this situation.”

"On the other side of the fence" by Karen Alekyan is based on photographs of fences that Alekyan took in various regions of Armenia. From the point of view of the artist, it is symbolic that the building materials of the fences consist of remnants from the past: parts of products of Soviet industry.

Karine Matsakyan was a KKA Artist in Residence in 2001. Today she is one of the most famous contemporary artists in Armenia. In her art works she presents the instability and ambiguity of a social order in which survival on an everyday basis is filled with difficulties, as well as the influence of that order on individuals in search of their role and their identity in an unshaped society.

Mher Azatyan was one of three artists who represented Armenia at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2011. Azatyan’s photos and free texts deal with private and collective human conditions. The phrases that he collected in public spaces, together with his own thoughts, are like separate private voices of individuals, and at the same time they collectively shape generalities that reflect the attitude of the artist and other people to the current situation in our society. (Tokmayan)


Arpine Tokmajyan is both an artist and a curator. She was a KKA Artist in Residence in 2010.