We are glad to invite you to the opening of Lilit Martirosyan’s exhibition titled “Body of Earth” on the 2nd of July at ICA (47 Avet Avetisyan 47).
The entrance is free.
The exhibition will be open until the 31st of July, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About the Exhibition<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exhibition features Lilit Martirosyan\u2019s four earth installations presented as a site-specific immersive exhibition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martirosyan\u2019s mediums are primal and tactile\u2014earth, wool, and earth once more. Yet beneath this elemental simplicity lies a conceptual complexity; by transforming raw matter into form, she pulls us away from our immediate reality, only to force a direct, inevitable confrontation with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The earth returns us to ourselves, anchoring us to the very ground we occupy. It recalls a primordial state of belonging, awakening a memory of when we lived in tandem with nature, entirely inseparable from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The earth grounds us in a profound sense of home, kinship, strength and security. It stands as a visceral reminder of our own origin: that earth is us, and we are of earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, is it not precisely to protect this sanctuary that nations rise up, mobilizing armies and waging wars with blind disregard for the cost? They fight for the land, ignoring the ultimate consequence: that the earth responds to our violence by shattering, reduced to nothing more than a fragile crumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martirosyan frequently employs immersive installations that rely on spatial transformation and sensory engagement. By leaning into the rich tactility of her mediums, she shifts the exhibition from a purely visual encounter into a deeply embodied experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This devotion to bodily experience and tactile sensuality marks a continuation of Martirosyan\u2019s previous projects, notably her past exhibitions, Inside<\/em> and The Substance<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her 2025 exhibition Inside<\/em> at the Hovhannisyan Institute, Martirosyan constructed an environment entirely out of wool, the aim of which was \u201cto use a deeply familiar material like wool to create an unfamiliar, unsettling space\u2026 prompting us to look at a medium known since childhood from a completely new perspective, discovering the familiar through its own contradictions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, Martirosyan presented The Substance<\/em> in Freiburg, Germany. The site-specific installation featured a dense layer of soil spread across the floor of an enclosed room, starkly contrasted by political plastic flags pasted onto the surrounding walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Substance<\/em> addressed the conflicting role of soil in human history, describing it as \u201c…humble foundation upon which civilizations are built, yet simultaneously the very catalyst for countless wars\u2014perpetuating endless cycles of violence and displacement.\u201d By asking visitors to walk barefoot on the raw earth, the artist grounded them in a direct relationship with the land with the soil while engulfed by imaginary flags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The current exhibition, Body of Earth<\/em>, once again brings the viewer into direct confrontation with the earth. Stripping away its familiar horizontal state beneath our feet, the installation turns the landscape vertical. Suspended at eye level, the earth demands a closer sensory engagement, challenging us to feel it, see it, and even hear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the earth telling us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lilit Grigoryan, curator<\/p>\n\n\n\n About the Artist<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lilit Martirosyan is a visual artist and painter currently based in Yerevan. Working primarily with installation, oil and watercolor painting and printmaking, she is best known for her expressive portraits and immersive installations that often incorporate experiential elements and spatial transformation. Her practice explores the conceptual character of materials, offering sensory and psychological journey into inner states and shared environments. Her recent solo exhibition The Inside (2025) at Hovhannissyan institute in Yerevan featured a spatial installation covering the hallway\/room in wool questioning materiality in relation to human perception and female labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She holds both BFA and MFA degrees from the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, and studied Monumental Painting at the Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design in St. Petersburg, Russia. Lilit has had solo shows in Germany (The Substance, Freiburg 2024) and Armenia (The Inside, Yerevan 2025) as well as numerous group exhibitions across Europe, Japan and The United States, including What Color Will My Skin Be Under the Water (Basel, 2024), and the 29th Annual Festival of Alternative Art (Yerevan, 2025). Her print works have been featured in the Sarcelles International Biennale of Engraving (Paris, 2023) and the International Print Biennale Yerevan (2019, 2023). She has participated in different international residency programs including Atelier Mondial (Germany, 2024), Edition Basel (Switzerland, 2024), and K\u00fcnstlerstadt Kalbe (Germany, 2023). A recipient of the Artbox Entrepreneur Grant (2024) and H. Hovnanyan Family Foundation Fellowship (2026) her work has been featured in Hyperallergic (New York, 2025) and EVNReport (Yerevan, 2025) magazines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are glad to invite you to the opening of Lilit Martirosyan’s exhibition titled “Body of Earth” on the 2nd of July at ICA (47 Avet Avetisyan 47).The entrance is free.The exhibition will be open until the 31st of July, 2026. About the Exhibition The exhibition features Lilit Martirosyan\u2019s four earth installations presented as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12062,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":""},"class_list":["post-12064","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/12064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/event"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/12064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12184,"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/12064\/revisions\/12184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}