Private Opening of "Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond" Exhibition at CCA

"Hanging garden. "Dadivank and the past" exhibition
"Sasuntsi Davit" garden hall, "Artsiv" hall, "Gallery Mek"
Cafesjian Art Center
July 08, 2022 – September 04, 2022

On July 4, 2022, the "Hanging Garden. "Dadivank and the Beyond" exhibition, which is a project of the AHA collective, led by curator Nairi Khachaturian.
The exhibition was outlined on November 13, 2020, as a result of creating local stamps in the Dadivank monastery complex of Artsakh, when an expedition of artists left Yerevan for Karvachar due to the emergency situation. Around these prints, works of art presented in different techniques, which were created in the following year outside the environment, in Armenia, are in dialogue.
"Hanging garden. The "Dadivank and the Beyond" project is a three-part exhibition spread across three halls of the Cafesjian Art Center.
The starting point of the exhibition is the "Sasuntsi David" garden hall, where the installation of stamps is presented as a testimony-relic of Dadivank's pilgrimage. The exhibition continues in the "Eagle" hall, where works with different techniques represent the wounds, collapses and erasures of the war. Appearing as a rebuke to these radical oppositions, there is a desire to create a new one, showing how humanity inhabits place and heritage. In that sense, Gallery One is screening a short film and conducting an educational program.
The AHA collective, represented by curator Nairi Khachaturian, as well as involved artists Sargis Antonyan, Vahram Galstyan, Anush Ghukasyan, Maida Shavak, and writers and researchers Tigran Amiryan, Nazareth Karoyan, Anahit Hayrapetyan, Claude Mutafyan, have done work of unprecedented scope and importance.
"Hanging garden. "Dadivank and Andi" exhibition will be open to the public from July 8 to September 4, 2022. Entry is free.

"Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond" Exhibition
Sasuntsi Davit Garden Gallery, Eagle Gallery, Gallery One
Cafesjian Center for the Arts
July 08, 2022 – September 04, 2022

The private opening of the exhibition Hanging Garden. Dadivank and Beyond took place at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts on July 4, 2022.
The exhibition "Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond" is a project by AHA collective, conceived following the creation of in-situ handmade imprints in the monastery of Dadivank in Artsakh's perched garden on November 13, 2020. In the year that followed, mixed- media works were created ex-situ in Armenia, which engage in dialogue with these imprints.
It is November 13, 2020, and a collective of artists from Yerevan has traveled to Dadivank in what is an emergency situation. A few days have passed since the signing of the ceasefire ending the 44-Day War launched by Azerbaijan (27 September-10 November 2020). The Karvachar region in the territory of Artsakh is being evacuated. On that day, a pilgrimage of another kind is improvised - local people, believers, travelers, soldiers, priests, journalists, and photographers, from here and elsewhere, gather in the monastery. The collective of artists seeks to carry out a simple action within their reach. Papers and clay tablets in hand, the artists take imprints of the stone walls decorated with Armenian inscriptions and bas-reliefs with geometric, vegetal, and religious ornaments. The collection of handmade imprints made today is an act of memory and preservation. Hanging Garden. Dadivank and Beyond is a triptych exhibition deployed in three spaces.
The beginning of the exhibition is in the Sasuntsi Davit Garden Gallery with the imprint installation as a testimonial relic of the pilgrimage in Dadivank. The series of paper and clay imprints are objects of memory, traces of an act of emergency, and historical sources of a heritage site with a status left hanging. The exhibition continues at the Eagle Gallery where mixed media works present the wounds of war, the acts of destruction, collapse, and erasure. A series of video artworks explore the process of cultural erasure and the different levels of human alteration and collapse, both individual and collective. Gallery One showcases such a short film and an educational program for everyone to practice the art of typography through wooden stamps, to write by hand to inscribe a permanent imprint.
As part of the exhibition, a bilingual catalog, with contributions by Tigran Amiryan, Maïda Chavak, Anahit Hayrapetyan, Nazareth Karoyan, Naïri Khatchadourian, and Claude Moutafian has been published as a collective travel diary where texts, images, and archives engage in dialogue to cross, think, and heal beyond this event. The texts are edited as a polyphonic narration and the photographs of the artworks installed at the Cafesjian are included as postcards in the diary to let the reader freedom to use them, write notes, and share them.
"Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond" exhibition will be open to the public from July 8 to September 4, 2022. The admission is free.