Artwork Gallery – Magazine Issue 2. Connections

Before moving to Armenia, you traveled a lot. Why did you choose this particular
country?
Among our research team were two people
from Armenia - a director and an ideological
inspirer. And then we decided with the whole
team that we would be based in Yerevan as
part of our projects. In 2012 it was an inexpensive
city to live in, from which it was convenient
to fly to any point in Asia. Our research
was mainly aimed at peoples of Asia who
have not yet succumbed to globalization and
have retained their authenticity in clothing,
lifestyle, and rituals.
When the Maidan began, I was in Nepal at that
time. Two weeks later I returned to Yerevan
and flew to Kyiv. I couldn’t stay away! I walked
along the Maidan with a blue and yellow flag
with the inscription “Donetsk” on it.
At the beginning of 2014, I had to return to
Yerevan because other ethnographic projects
had already been planned and agreed upon.
I was supposed to be part of the team by the
end of the year.
And then... And then Russian armed groups
and militarized gangs entered Donetsk,
many of my friends and acquaintances were
forced to run with only one bag because they
were “on the lists.” And some ended up “in
the basement”. Some have gone missing... In
short, after 2014 I had nowhere to go back.
How was the integration in the new place? What did you start doing as a creative
person?
I decided to stay in Armenia for the time
being, got a job as an interior designer and
painted walls, started creating costumes
for various shows. At the same time, I went
on an expedition a couple of times a year,
because I already had experience and
hardening, so I could combine the functions
of a cameraman, a journalist, a photographer,
and a researcher of everyday life and
religious beliefs. I took with my pens, felt-tip
pens, oil pastels, and I made sketches there,
which I immediately gave to people who
were models for me.
You would have seen how happy those
people were with those portraits! Nobody has
drawn them yet! And inside me flowed the
experience of contact with the lives of people
of another culture, contact with their souls
through the picture. Sometimes I could buy
a small canvas and a set of small oil paints on
the market and paint the images that particularly
touched me, already more professionally.
I brought them some later with me.
In 2015, I took part in a group exhibition
of portrait painters in Yerevan and exhibited
three portraits that I painted in India.
They noticed me, and from that time I
began to receive commissions for individual
portraits.
What is your current main creative direction? What is your art about?
Now I continue to explore the inner world inside, don’t be afraid of anything! You do
of a person because this topic is inexhaustible.
I strive to reach that level of artistry yourself and the world, do not stop!” I exper-
not know your depth, go forward, explore
when one can read on canvas without iment with techniques and materials, master
words: “Human, you have no limitations bigger formats, learn new things through
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