Epress.am News from Armenia
Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (ACCEA, or NPAK in Armenian) has launched a new group exhibit called “Toy of the Idle Time” this month. The exhibit aims to bring together citizens around social and community issues which are of concern.
The issues ACCEA lists on their call for proposals for this exhibit include initiatives to defend Teghut forest, to save Moscow Cinema’s outdoor summer hall, commercialization of Yerevan’s Student Park, state funding for foreign-language schools in Armenia, and incidents of murder in Armenia’s armed forces, to name but a few.
Speaking to Epress.am, exhibit curator Seda Shekoyan discussed the details and aim of the event.
“We proposed to a few civil society initiatives to cooperate [with us] and have their own exhibits. There were discussions and it was decided that from the initiatives only individuals would participate,” said Shekoyan.
She mentioned that there’s a specific concept within which the exhibit will be held.
“It is common to consider an activist as one who is engaged in others’ works, is a volunteer, generous and giving; for example, one who has dedicated himself to the social good. The activist’s volunteerism and generosity are imperative. Today, the activist demands his right for a desired job: that space which has been partially opened after the formal collapse of the Soviet Union, when activism as an everyday civil initiative, as we know it today, was not possible,” said the curator, citing part of the exhibit’s concept.
According to Shekoyan, the exhibit aims to bring social activism to the aesthetic arena, the field of art.
“The works presented in the exhibit have a descriptive orientation, as, for example, the civil activism on recent incidents in the Armenian army, when artists depicted the image of a killed soldier [on the walls of] Yerevan’s pedestrian underpasses, the civil initiative on Moscow Cinema, the initiative against the destruction of Teghut forest,” described the curator.
According to the exhibit’s call for proposals posted on the ACCEA website, “By making civic activism an alternative field of human activity and a routine activity of thinking citizen, the exhibition intends to make these social and civic initiatives and activism subject of evaluation, challenge, and analysis.”
The exhibit runs from Nov. 16, 2010, till Mar. 12, 2011.