ACSL Board
Susanna Gyulamiryan
President
Susanna Gyulamiryan is the curator, author and project director of numerous art projects, exhibitions, seminars, conferences. She is also an art critic and a board member of AICA – Armenia (International Association of Art Critics, Armenian Branch). She is the initiator of establishing the contemporary institution “Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory” (ACSL) and the president of ACSL since the year of its founding - 2007. Susanna Gyulamiryan is also the director and chief curator of the International Artist-Residence “Art Commune” which operates all the year round. “Art Commune” is the first institutional Artist-in-Residence program in post-Soviet Armenia. As the curator and author of main annual international projects have been organizing by ACSL she focuses her interests on analytical reflections around the issues which are on vital importance for society and culture locally and internationally. Her current field of interests covers the philosophical, epistemological, and aesthetical representation of the ‘other’ in visual arts, gender, post-colonial issues and specificities of the ‘feminine’ in contemporary art.
Susanna Gyuamiryan is a lecturer of Cultural Studies at the Armenian Open University/Department of Fine Arts (International Academy of Education), she also led the special MA course of Gender Studies at the Yerevan State University/ Department of Cultural Studies.
Download articles:
Subjects-Objects of History and their Histories
The Menu of the Last Supper, 2009
Hrach Bayadyan
Board Member
Hrach Bayadyan is a professor at the Yerevan State University/Department of Journalism and Cultural Studies. He is a leading cultural critic in Armenia. He was the First Deputy Director at the Department of Information and Publications Republic of Armenia and a member of National Commission on Television and Radio. He has written on post-Soviet media, culture, and urban spaces, on social and cultural implications of information and communication technologies.
His recent publications include: Soviet Armenian Identity and Cultural Representation in T. Darieva and W. Kaschuba (Eds.) Representations on the Margins of Europe. Cultural and Historical Identities in the Baltic and South Caucasian States, Campus Verlag, 2007; Imagining the Past, Moscow Art Magazine, #65/66 June, 2007;Post-Soviet Armenia: New Social Order and the Changing Media Landscape in V. Azatyan (ed.) Public Sphere: Between Contestation and Reconcilliation, Ankyunacar Press, Yerevan 2007.
E-mail: hrachb[at]yahoo.com
Download articles:
Short Essays on Post-Soviet Yerevan
Soviet Armenian Identity and Cultural Representation
Vahram Martirosyan
Board Member
Vahram Martirosyan is an author, literary translator, and journalist living in Yerevan, Armenia. With a doctoral degree in Philology from Yerevan State University, he started his writing career as a playwright and a literary consultant of the Writers’ Union of Armenia. Since 1988 he has published eight books including poetry, short fiction, and novels, in addition to translating various literary works from English, French, Hungarian, and Russian. At the time of the “Velvet Revolution” that led to Armenia’s independence in 1991, he edited the literary-translation section of “Grakan Tert” magazine. Since that year his professional activities have comprised a variety of journalistic and literary endeavors as well as a professorship at the V. Brusov Yerevan Linguistic State University with special course: The separation of literature from the State.
He was a founder and the executive director of one of Armenia’s first independent television stations; a writer and host of several cut ting-edge talk shows; and held editorial posts at a number of media companies. Vahram Martirosyan is co-founder and co-editor of “Bnagir” (2001-2005), a literary magazine of Armenian nonconformist writers that was published both online and in print. Currently he is a professor in the Film School of Film Festival Golden Apricot.
He writes scripts of full-length fiction films.
E-mail: vammart[at]yahoo.com
Raffie Davtian
Board Member
Raffie Davtian is an artist living in Tehran, Iran, and Yerevan, Armenia. With a Master’s Degree of Sculptor from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Yerevan he started his active career as an artist of the numerous group and solo artistic shows, film festivals and was awarded with several prestigious international awards such as Photography Awards for the photo series in New York (USA) – twice in 2004, 2005. He was also awarded for sculpture composition in Tehran, Iran.
E-mail: raffie_davtian[at]yahoo.com