We are glad to invite you to the opening of the I Look at the World exhibition taking place on March 13th, 7pm at the Gevorg Grigoryan/Giotto Studio-Museum․
Address: Mashtots Ave., 45a Building (adjacent to 6th entrance)
The exhibition will be open until April 12th.
Free entrance.
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About the exhibition
How do we perceive the world? What do we see? What do we notice — and what do we fail to notice? What do we choose to look at?
The exhibition I Look at the World resonates with a central claim of phenomenology: that reality is not accessible to us as something simply “given” in itself, but can be understood only through personal perception and experience. Although the world exists as an objective fact, according to the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty we relate to it and understand it only through our bodily sensations, movement, memory, and lived experience.
In this sense, the lived body becomes the point from which objective space unfolds, defining the “horizon” or “background” that makes any awareness of reality possible. Moreover, looking itself is a way of relating to the world: when we look at the world, we become part of it.
In the works presented in the exhibition I Look at the World, we can observe how the artists approach the world from their own horizons of perception. This gaze manifests itself through the observation of nature, the exploration of the self, the documentation of childhood, the reinterpretation of memory, the recording of cultural codes and everyday experiences, as well as through experimental uses of material and visual language.
Nevertheless, these works do not aim to present an “objective” reality; rather, they reveal how the world acquires meaning through individual experience. Nature, childhood, identity, war, migration, the physical strata of the world, everyday life, and crises of identity appear here as distinct vantage points through which each artist’s reality is perceived and interpreted through their available artistic means.
This group of artists was selected from participants of the Institute for Contemporary Art’s program How to Survive as an Emerging Artist (2025–2026). Among such diverse practices one can observe both parallel ideas and topics that do not intersect at all. Nevertheless, in their approaches to looking at the world it is possible to trace a trajectory from the personal toward the abstract, which in each case takes a distinct direction both conceptually and artistically.
As the British art critic John Berger writes: “We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.” The exhibition offers an opportunity to see what these artists have chosen to look at.
Artists: Lilit Arzumanyan, Garnik Gevorgyan, Hrant Khekoyan, Mariam Hakobyan, Mikayel Hayrapetyan, Tehmine Harutyunyan, Hasmik Sahakyan
Curator: Armen Yesayants
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Program Details
This exhibition is the graduation project of the intense training course aimed at strengthening the abilities of emerging artists. In the course of 3 months, artists from Yerevan and the regions attended seminars conducted by established specialists from Armenia and abroad and had the opportunity to develop their portfolio and artist statement, to learn the basics of art marketing, and to make numerous professional connections.
The program is implemented with the support of the ArtNexus programme, which is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and managed by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
About ArtNexus
ArtNexus is an international program led by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee (SAGC) and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), promoting artistic freedom, development and the strengthening of democratic processes.
