4th GYUMRI ART WEEK / Ecology&Environment
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August 8–17, 2025
Opening night: Аugust 8, Gyumri Technology Center
Curators
Sargis Hovhannisyan, Victoria Ilyushkina (CYLAND), Gagik Ghazareh (Open Platform)
Organizers
GCAW, Gyumri Branch Of Academy Of Fine Arts Of Armenia, Museum of Literature and Arts named after Yeghishe Charents, Gallery of Mariam and Yeranuhi Aslamazyan Sisters, Museum of National Architecture and Urban Life, Gyumri Technology Center, Enterprise Incubator Foundation, Merkurov House Museum, Berlin Art Hotel, Open Platform in partnership and with the support of CYLAND MediaArtLab.
International Gyumri Art Week is an annual festival for contemporary art in the city of Gyumri, Armenia. It is designed to become a catalyst for artistic research and experimentation in the region and to provoke debates on the actual cultural and societal processes.
The 4th Gyumri Art Week aims to foster connections between contemporary art and diverse fields of human knowledge—including anthropology, ecology, geology, architecture, urban planning, design, sociology, history, and emerging technologies. This interdisciplinary approach envisions a network of interconnected ecosystems where creative practices serve as catalysts for confronting global climate and ecological challenges.
A core objective of this year’s edition is to actively engage local creative and educational communities in collaborative projects at the intersection of art, ecology, and environmental awareness. These initiatives will explore the cultural dimensions of climate change and promote artistic interventions that reflect on and respond to our changing world. Furthermore, the Art Week seeks to nurture the concept of an active audience—one that participates in knowledge production and becomes an integral part of shaping the dialogue between art and society. Through workshops, exhibitions, talks, and site-specific actions, we aim to create new links between contemporary artistic practices and individuals, organizations, and research-based initiatives working across disciplines.
This year's edition is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Marcos Grigorian (1925–2007), a prominent Armenian artist, thinker, and pioneer of contemporary art.
CYLAND Video Archive Program
Curated by Victoria Ilyushkina
Florian Schönerstedt, Dmitry Bulatov & Alexey Chebykin, Regina Hüebner, Maria Grabareva & Nil Excolor, Angelina Voskopoulou, Marina Abadjeva, Nestor Engelke, Gentle Women group
Florian Schönerstedt The Maps of The Battlefield, 2023
12 min
From January 1 to December 31, 2016, the artist collected and archived all the waste produced in his apartment (including that of his son and partner). He excluded soiled items and organic residues. The film presents a comprehensive record, displaying one to five objects per frame at a rate of 12 frames per second.
Dmitry Bulatov & Alexey Chebykin Dancing Forest, 2022—ongoing
7 min 2 sec
The project explores the interaction between two types of non-human agents: trees and geomagnetic fields. It focuses on a distinctive section of pine forest in the Curonian Spit National Park (Kaliningrad Region), where the trunks appear unnaturally bent and twisted. One possible explanation for this anomaly lies in the unique characteristics of the area’s local magnetic fields. As part of their research, the artists mapped the site’s geomagnetic activity and developed custom devices capable of capturing both the real-time electrical signals emitted by the trees and the fluctuations of the geomagnetic field
Regina Hüebner KARKHACH, 2025
live recorded sound
3 min 23 sec
KARKHACH explores Armenian khachkars (cross-stones) from the rock-carved Geghard Monastery and other sites across Armenia — unique medieval Christian monuments recognized by UNESCO as symbols of Armenian cultural identity. The title inverts the syllables of “khachkar,” turning them into an abstract sound that reflects the artist’s personal distance from the Armenian language and script. The work juxtaposes realistic imagery with conceptual abstraction, evoking the timeless and evolving nature of stone and ornament.
The video combines kaleidoscopic visuals inspired by khachkar patterns and everyday Armenian motifs, with a live recording of a lullaby sung in the dark halls of Geghard Monastery. This haunting moment — echoing between devotion, history, and rebellion — connects the enduring sacred heritage of Armenia with personal reflection on memory, circular time, and identity.
Maria Grabareva & Nil Excolor Greening, 2018
Music: Bardoseneticcube
21 min 55 sec
The city takes over new territories, roads, residential complexes are built, metro lines are laid, new stations are opened. A new metro station costs the lives of hundreds of trees around. Dried-out trees are the last rebels of the forest. When the city finally takes over, dries up, kills nature, an artist comes and brings the trees back to life with the help of art.
Angelina Voskopoulou Behind This Page but not Disappearing, 2015
16 min 40 sec
Angelina Voskopoulou performs dance in front of the camera, also known as screen dance, rather than documenting it. She choreographs, knowing that she will reorganize and manipulate the material during the editing process. She tries to create a visual metaphor using a combination of narrative and location. The concept of video choreography in her films is based on her own texts, writings and ideas.
Marina Abadjeva EHALE, 2023
14 min 42 sec
An endless state of searching — feeling out the next step that should bring peace and reveal a way out. A constant quest for support, where with every movement you find yourself in the same place — a point of confusion… and of presence.
Nestor Engelke Wood:Store, 2022
2 min 37 sec
It is a Nestor Engelke’s public art project with a social irony reflecting the routine and consumerism.The world’s first wood store integrating into a real commercial space in the Sydney Market presents both old-fashion and innovative “i-tuk” wooden electronic models: TVs, telephones and smartphones, laptops, boomboxes, and radios; only the products are a kind of rethinking of real goods, which are essential for a nowadays consumer high-tech technologies with no splinters in its creations and their hearts.
Gentle Women group The Art of Braiding, 2018
5 min 11 sec
One of the central motifs in mythology and cultural traditions worldwide is the cutting or transformation of hair — a source of power, identity, and status. In the Bible, heroes lose their strength with the loss of hair; in Russian custom, braiding symbolizes the transition from girlhood to wifehood, while cutting hair was historically used as punishment, even as recently as World War II. The Russian word kosa (braid) also means “scythe” or “spit of land,” a fitting reference to the Ahrenshoop commune, where dune grasses resembling women’s hair are used to thatch roofs.
During their residency in Ahrenshoop, the Gentle Women collective enacted a ritual braiding their hair together with dune plants and then unbraiding them. This action merged the human and natural, transforming them into a single entity. The painful unbraiding became a metaphor for severing roots, blurring the boundaries between myth, memory, and landscape.
