Re-imagining Artistic Practices:
A Conversation on Objects, Materiality, and Archives
With Marie-Aude Baronian
We are pleased to host the gallery’s first conversation of 2026 with philosopher Marie-Aude Baronian. What is of importance in the current exhibition ‘Embodied Landscapes’, is the attentiveness with which artist Aleksandr Avagyan engages materiality in the creation of his works. Whether paper, wood, polystyrene, or other materials, his practice reflects a deep awareness of resources. The materials are found, collected, or gifted. Each carries its own biography, both in terms of provenance, which the artist highlights in his labels, and in their prior use, visible through cracks, lines, and textures that become integral to his painting and sculptural processes. The objects carry somehow an archival character. They carry material and immaterial memory.
For more than 25 years, Marie-Aude Baronian has researched, published, and thought on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, between image, archive, and memory. She has extensively researched and lectured on Armenian diasporic cinema and visual culture, authoring many articles on a diversity of artists, filmmakers, philosophers, and fashion designers. Her most recent monographs include The Cinematic Life of Material Objects (Meson Press, forthcoming); Mémoire et Image: Regards sur la Catastrophe arménienne (L’Age d’Homme, 2013. English translation in preparation), and Screening Memory: The Prosthetic Images of Atom Egoyan (Editions Académie Royale Belgique, 2017). Her forthcoming book co-written with R. Zagury-Orly entitled Altérités de l’art. Emmanuel Levinas et les arts visuels (Paris, Herman) will be launched this year. She teaches philosophy of the image, visual culture, and film theory at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.
While Marie-Aude Baronian is in Yerevan for a major international conference on Memory Studies, we are pleased to convene at the gallery for this exchange. In conversation with curator Nairi Khatchadourian, the discussion will explore how artistic practices are being reimagined today through questions of material objects and archives. We will reflect on the vital role of the humanities, which offer ethical and moral points of reference and alternative ways of thinking in response to an increasingly violent present.
The talk will start with the launch of our new installation piece, extending Aleksandr Avagyan’s exhibition toward the gallery’s balcony. See you on January 28 at 7pm at the entrance of Moskovyan 31 for the reveal of our second balcony piece and a philosophical exchange with Marie-Aude Baronian!
Free entrance with prior registration.
