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Abastan Exhibition 2023
Abastan is a community of artists in Tumanyan, a small post-industrial town in northern Armenia. The project took off in 2022 when migrant artists who came to Armenia in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were offered to turn the space of a former school/textile factory into a residency, studios, and workshops. In the following year they were joined by Iranian, Armenian and international artists and volunteers. Having met there for the first time, all taken out of their familiar environments, these people were striving to understand each other, build a community and forge their artistic paths, while struggling to keep the dilapidated building alive, facing uncertainties of the future, and coming to terms with their strange position as guests-or-intruders of Tumanyan. In my photo project, I wanted to capture the spirit of this unique community and find a visual language to depict its members’ search for the “I” and the “we” in common work, the difficulty and the hard work of building a community, reflected metaphorically in the difficulty and the hard work required for maintaining the beautiful but decaying building in which the community created its home. The photos were shot on film and printed using expired photo paper.
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