On December 5, at 7:00 PM, the Institute of Contemporary Art invites you to the opening of the exhibition “Hail to the Union of Artists from the Netherworld” or “The Official Art Has Died”, which is dedicated to the remarkable performance that took place on October 23, 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on December 7, at 3:00 PM, come to the Institute of Contemporary Art to participate in a meeting with the participants of the historical performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On October 23, 1988, the opening of Yerevan\u2019s official \u201cAutumn Exhibition\u201d was interrupted by a silent procession: a cohort of young artists, costumed as the living dead, glided through the galleries and exited without a word. The action made a blunt statement: since the official art sanctioned by the Artists\u2019 Union belonged to the past\u2014and was therefore \u201cdead\u201d\u2014its proper audience could only be zombies. The intervention has since become a seminal milestone in the history of Armenian performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same artists had held a semi-official debut the previous year, after hard-won negotiations secured them the Union\u2019s Conference Hall on the third floor\u2014an origin that christened the name of the movement \u201c3rd Floor.\u201d For this unofficial 1988 performance, initiated by Arman Grigoryan and Kiki, each artist offered a personal vision of the living dead: a livid vampire (Karine Matsakyan), a dead soldier (Kiki), a dark, shadowy figure (Sev), or, in a more conceptual vein, Achot Achot wearing a jacket inscribed \u201cnature morte\u201d and Grigoryan carrying a board reading \u201cThe Netherworld,\u201d while others adopted makeup inspired by rock bands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The materials presented in the exhibition document the course of the performance \u2014 a silent walk through the exhibition hall \u2014 and its aftermath, when the artists returned to the Youth Section office where they had dressed, lingering to pose for photographs and playfully celebrate their gesture. For these artists, performance was a disruptive language of protest: portable, low-cost, provocative, and public. The piece framed official culture as a mausoleum and the act of viewing as a ritual of mourning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their \u201cNetherworld\u201d metaphor operated in two directions: as a burial ground for exhausted official styles and, retrospectively, as a reflection of the group\u2019s own underground position as artists either excluded from, or relegated to the periphery of, the sanctioned cultural sphere. A few months later, the first major exhibition (called \u201c666\u201d) of 3rd<\/sup> Floor was organized in the Artists\u2019 Union\u2019s exhibition halls, underscoring the 1988 performance as a symptom of a broader moment of paradigmatic transition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The performance involved about twenty participants, including Achot Achot, Arman Grigoryan, Kamo Grigoryan, Vardan Harutyunyan, Boris Kazarian, Ha\u00efkouhie Kazarian, Kiki (Grigor Mikaelyan), Karine Matsakyan, Karo Mkrtchyan, Stepan Panosyan, Vahan Rumelyan, Sev (Henrik Khachatryan), Vardan Vardanian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This exhibition presents the iconic performance through newly discovered materials, such as Aram Urutyan\u2019s digitized archival 8 mm film footage and color slides from Arman Grigoryan\u2019s archive, shown alongside seminal photographs by Zaven Khachikyan and some ephemera, as well as a new documentary by Choghakate Kazarian featuring interviews with the participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition is curated by Choghakate Kazarian and Ruben Arevshatyan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The curators and the Institute for Contemporary Art Yerevan would like to express special thanks to the family of Arman Grigoryan, Aram Urutyan, Zaven Khachikyan, Armen Gevorgyan, Karen Arakelyan, and all participating artists for their support in preparing this exhibition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On December 5, at 7:00 PM, the Institute of Contemporary Art invites you to the opening of the exhibition “Hail to the Union of Artists from the Netherworld” or “The Official Art Has Died”, which is dedicated to the remarkable performance that took place on October 23, 1988. And on December 7, at 3:00 PM, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7912,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":""},"class_list":["post-7914","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/7914","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\/7914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7972,"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/7914\/revisions\/7972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ica.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}