CYFEST 17: Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape
October 15, 2026 — January 17, 2027, Yerevan, Armenia
Opening reception: October 15, 18:00
Cafesjian Center for the Arts
CYLAND Foundation, in partnership with the Cafesjian Center for the Arts, presents the International Media Art Festival CYFEST 17: Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape in Yerevan from October 15, 2026 to January 17, 2027.
Featuring works by more than 35 international artists, the exhibition brings contemporary media art into dialogue with the legacy of the Organic School and its experiments with color, light, space, movement, and expanded perception. Across these different practices, Natura Naturans explores how we perceive a world shaped by forces and processes that are both visible and beyond the reach of ordinary perception.
Sunlight, magnetic fields, geological matter, biological forms, cosmic radiation, and electromagnetic signals become ways of examining how perception is shaped by technology and by the surrounding material world. Works throughout the exhibition translate invisible or barely perceptible phenomena into material, visual, and sonic form, while also addressing questions of dependence, vulnerability, ecology, and the limits of human control.
Presented throughout the Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Natura Naturans enters into a close dialogue with the architecture and spatial rhythm of the Cascade. Its relationship between interior and exterior, vertical movement, changing viewpoints, natural light, and the surrounding city reflects the exhibition’s interest in perception, material processes, and technological systems. Here, the Cascade becomes more than a setting: it is integral to how the project is experienced.
The public program expands the exhibition through performance, sound, moving image, talks, and educational events. The opening night on October 15 will feature performances by Jaanika Peerna, φø, Andrey Smirnov and Dafin Antoniadou, as well as works by Alexandra Dementieva and Andy Barrt with a Unitree G1 EDU humanoid robot, developed in collaboration with Engineering City. Marina Alexeeva will present the outdoor mapping work Looking at You, activating the façade of the Cascade.
The opening days will also include Lev Manovich’s lecture Pleasing, Compliant, Infinite: AI as a Visual Artistic Medium; Barbara London’s curator’s talk What Works? and the video program What’s in a Story?; and sound performances by Francesco Cavaliere and Nicola Ratti, introducing a broader sound art program that will continue throughout the three months of the exhibition.
CYFEST’s partnership with ARé Fest brings the two festivals together around shared interests in embodiment, landscape, and ecology, with a performance art program presented across both festivals.
Curators
Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova, Silvia Burini, Giuseppe Barbieri, Armen Yesayants, Marine Karoyan, Alexandra Dementieva, Barbara London, Diego Aguirre Fernández, Sergei Komarov, Lidiia Griaznova, Victoria Ilyushkina, Jérôme Nivet-Carzon
Artists
AES+F, Marina Alexeeva, Marcela Armas, Andy Barrt, Lisa Mara Batacchi, Liudmila Belova, Elie Bolard, CAA (CYLAND Audio Archive), Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants, Haroutiun Galentz, Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov, Hakob Hakobyan, Sung Nam Han, Zhuang Han, Aernoudt Jacobs, Sergey Kishchenko, Sergei Komarov & Lidiia Griaznova, Alexey Kostroma, Anne-Sarah Le Meur, William Latham, Diego Liedo, Natalia Lyakh, Lev Manovich, Tuula Närhinen, Anna Otsolainen, Jaanika Peerna, Matvei Peshkov & Aleksandr Bochkov, Mariateresa Sartori, Dmitriy Shishov, Suren Tadevosyan, Koen Theys, Reggy Timmermans & Beatrijs Albers, Eric Vernhes, Mathieu Zurstrassen
CYFEST 17 is organized by CYLAND Foundation in partnership with Cafesjian Center for the Arts. The project’s general sponsor is Frants Foundation.
The project is made possible in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Centre for Studies in Russian, Central Asian and Caucasian Art — CSAR, MOMus–Museum of Modern Art–Costakis Collection, ARé Fest, National Gallery of Armenia, Engineering City, and Art in Country of Tokyo (AICOT).
