Narine Zolyan does her solo project at ACCEA/NPAK with declared intention of leaving Armenia after the show. When you do a project in a place, which you know in advance you are going to abandon, the resulting situation can be called “Re-examination at the school to be abandoned” or “Once upon a time there was and there was not…”
The project which is being implemented in a space to be abandoned happens neither at that space, nor at the space where the artist is getting ready to relocate. It remains suspended in the air or turns into dust immediately after re-examination. It is possible to forbid the chain of pulverizing acts by intervening as art critics or by conservative presentations, but in order to prevent something, or to disturb the act of pulverization, there have to be sufficient reasons.
Due to circumstances resulting in studying at various schools, I know what it means to study and take examination in one place, and continue in another. Re-examination can be result of unlearned lesson, but you may study all of the lessons, and not show up on the examination. What is important is not learning or not learning the lesson, but to observe your own self subjected to examiner and examination. Re-examination is not evaluated. It is forgiven. This re-examination desires to be valued, instead of being forgiven.
The artist has taken her examinations, has learned and unlearned lessons mainly in one place, but the re-examination is taking place in another one. Narine Zolyan has done significant part of her work outside the “Armenia-School”, in Moscow.
If for Narine Zolyan art has ever been simply a way of life, then she has been in the arts for so long that for her it has turned into a matter of honor and dignity, for which she does a project in a space to be abandoned. The opposite process of transition from honor to survival would be more preferred and less painful.
Seda Shekoyan
Curator
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“Since the author is isolated, all pretensions of ‘deciphering’
are totally futile. To assign author to a text means fettering
the text, bestowing it with definite significance”.
Roland Barthes
Fragments. Revision or Endless Reincarnation
“… After all where is the border between the real and the imaginary? Who keeps the score in retrospect? Who does the reading? Who does the coordinating, and who does the re-checking? Death of the author is only a post-modernistic gimmick, a simulacrum… Multiplicity of meaning of text does not exclude possibility of authorship as well as co-authorship during multilateral reading, in this case reading of my artistic biography in the context of the exhibition.
Narine Zolyan
