Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond

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, when a collective of artists from Yerevan traveled to Karvachar Region in an emergency situation. In the following year, mixed-media works were created ex-situ in Armenia, which engage in dialogue with these imprints.

Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond is a triptych exhibition deployed in three spaces.

The start of the exhibition is in Sasuntsi Davit Garden Gallery with the imprint installation as a testimonial relic of the pilgrimage to Dadivank. The exhibition continues in Eagle Gallery, where mixed media works present the wounds of war, the acts of destruction, collapse, and erasure. Facing these radical opposites, there is an urge to reinvent how mankind inhabits territory and heritage and what new forms can be taken by one’s sense of belonging to one’s land and language. Gallery One showcases such a short film and an educational program for all to practice art of typography through wooden stamps, to write by hand to inscribe a permanent imprint.

The AHA collective, represented by curator Nairi Khatchadourian, and the artists, writers and researchers Sargis Antonyan, Vahram Galstyan, Anush Ghukasyan, Maïda Chavak, Tigran Amiryan, Nazareth Karoyan, Anahit Hayrapetyan, Claude Mutafian have made an enormous work of unprecedented scale and importance.

Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond exhibition will be open to the public at Sasuntsi Davit Garden Gallery, Eagle Gallery and Gallery One from July 8 to September 4, 2022. The admission is free.