Gohar Sargsyan

Artist. Born in Gyumri, Armenia in 1981. Studied History of Arts at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia and Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. In 2016, Sargsyan graduated from the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography with a degree in Animation. 

She works with different mediums, combining painting, textile design, installation, video art, and animation in her projects. Her main artistic interests of artwork focus on social interaction, processes of self-identification, and exploration of the concept of “humanity”. 

She led workshops at the Goethe Institute, International Women’s Association of Yerevan (IWAY), Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife & Cultural Assets, and summer schools in Berlin, Rudolstadt, Ranis, etc. 

She is a participant in Armenian and international exhibitions, including Biennale Aktuelle Musik  (Germany), Prague Biennale (Czech Republic), The International Print Biennale (Armenia), Odesa Photo Days Festival (Ukraine), John B. Aird Gallery (Canada), ARé performing arts festival, Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation.  

Her solo exhibition “Strangers in the Room” was on display at the National Library of Armenia, and took place in the context of the campaign “Arts and Culture Against the Crisis”, organized by the Embassy of Switzerland in Armenia. Project “The Return of Western Armenian Poets” was selected for the Grant of  Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and will be implemented in 2024. 

• The first prize winner in One Shot International Film Festival with her short experimental animated film called Right or Left.
• The third prize winner in the Michelangelo’s Brush International art Competition, Italy, 2021. 

“I work on reconciling the dichotomy between the visuals that come to the world outside our bodies and the ones existing within our psyches, by re-contextualizing them into intimate, familiar narratives, within the subtext of collective consciousness. This is emphasized both in my landscape works as well as portraitures. 

Having learned various media and artistic means from graphics to painting to video art, I seek to reconstruct spaces and figures into poetic signifiers using color, form, and lines. Over the years I have been creating my personal approach with paint, layering colors and textures, creating washes, forcing erasures, and overlaying and experimenting and combining with different mediums.”