Seyranush Manukyan
An unusual exhibition by the artist Henry Elibekyan—recognized both in Armenia and beyond its borders—opened at the Actors’ House.
This exhibition is the artist’s response to our tragic time, a call to move from unbelief to faith, a special dedication to the victims of the “regime.”
The artist finds new means, forms, and genres of representation in order to express his feelings, ideas, and visions. Painting, graphics, collage, photographic montage, pop art, installation, and assemblage recreate the atmosphere of spiritual vacuum in which humanity has found itself on the threshold of the 21st century.
Everything has been trampled—Christ, the Church, the flock. People are in cages. Among them are Armenian Catholicoi Gevorg IV and Gevorg V, Khoren I, a victim of Stalinist repressions, a child, the artist himself. Our temples and monasteries stand behind bars. A bloody bacchanalia has engulfed the entire country. People’s minds are paralyzed, their mouths are sealed, their features are distorted. Man has been transformed into a repulsive creature—victim and executioner in one figure, with six pairs of eyes and ears…
Only Faith can save society, but for this one must be purified, must bring God back… Many of the artist’s compositions are executed on industrial drawings and maps that serve as symbols of calculation; almost every composition is a new discovery in terms of content and form creation.
A large-scale, expressive canvas executed in assemblage technique—together with installations and live models in action—which constituted the semantic culmination of the exhibition project, was completed by the artist in front of the audience during the exhibition opening ceremony. That action embodied Henry Elibekyan’s central idea: “From unbelief to faith, from spiritual bankruptcy to love and compassion.”
Published in the newspaper Golos Armenii,
June 20, 1998.