Here are six Armenian artists, all quite secular, in a famous Armenian monastery located beyond the shores of their home country, namely in Venice, Italy: while the world has got accustomed to peoples living in their home countries there are peoples who have to derive their self-awareness mainly from the loss of it.
When contemplating this paradox thoughts tend to go either way: backward, thereby grieving and mourning the loss, or forward, claiming the lost identity back by dreaming up a kind of unity which allows for one’s own identity to be seamlessly interwoven with the collective one by merging both in a place to be named Armenian – flags, music, dignitaries and all. However, both strains of thought are a delusion: no one can grieve forever, and the beauty of the flag and music acts as camouflage for the violence that has always been associated with nationality. There is no nation without military, none without the humiliating imbalance between rich and poor, none that does not flex its muscles to punish those who challenge the might of its institutions and do not play by the rules – a vain endeavour. Thus, those Armenians who have nothing left but a dream or vanished hopes are looked upon by the world as the lucky ones.
All that remains of the past and for the future is the narrow gauge of the here and now and the need to determine what exactly Armenian means – beyond all retroactive and future illusions. Art renders itself beautifully for this experiment: its mostly unviolent, playful nature unfolds not only as a dialogue between the artists but also as a dialogue with an unsuspecting audience.

The nowhere, the void, the blanks could be filled with all that was or could have been, had it not been for the all-destructive violence. Art can be such a void, and all those who allow themselves to be touched by art discover the nowhere that is at the root of their own existence. And in this context we can speak of an Armenia Now//:here. Like a vector this concept represents the interaction between the past and the future, the span in which our lives briefly unfold, if at all. Armenia Now//:here acts as a motor for reciprocal creativity.
If we –like those three quarters of Armenians who do not have a land to call their own– ask ourselves what the essence of their existence is, if we look beyond grievance and illusion, or else if we virtuously consider identity to be something that can only be seen critically and in context with its formation, then the only likely answer is fruitful commemoration and historically evolving imagination. Armenia is the place where people pick up the threads to weave them into a carpet, the fuzzy pattern of which manifests their yearning for an existence without self-denial. Armenia is the place where the materiality and texture of such threads reflect all that could only be heard by the yearning voices of the grandparents: a love of unmistakable colour and taste.