5
p.m. at the Union of Architects of Armenia. 17, Baghramian, Yerevan.
Texts
of the curator Susanna Gyulamiryan:
CANT-IERI
Enzo
Comin has started working on the project entitled “Cant-ieri”
over a year ago. “Cant-ieri” is an attempt to rehabilitate and
reconstruct through artistic gesture certain areas, or, more
specifically, the dilapidated shipyard (cantiere) of the Monfalcone
town in the North-astern Italy. As the artist himself notes, these
ruins symbolize the global economic crisis started at the end of the
previous decade and still continuing today. After photographing the
formerly active buildings of strategic importance that were
consequently destroyed during the World War II, Enzo Comin attempts
to “rehabilitate” them by placing new pictorial images on the
surface of the photographs, thus, artificially renovating the ruined
objects. This gesture tends to the “positive”, symbolizing
rehabilitation and reconstruction, in contrast with the current
crisis. Initially, being cursorily informed about the consumer and
re-urbanization processes started at the end of 1990s in Yerevan,
Enzo Comin’s one-month visit to Yerevan and the implemented
research allowed him to conceive the true nature of the local
“progressive” processes of re-urbanization, “remodernization”.
Processes
that in the eyes of many citizens and the artist in particular were
violating the basic principles of urban planning and organization
(irrelevant planning of buildings, extermination of green zones,
gentrification, etc.).
Enzo
Comin’s attempt to continue the project “Cant-ieri” in Yerevan,
which was initiated a month ago, refers to the fate of the city
inhabitants. The artist uses photographic images of Yerevan’s past
inhabitants to overlay them on the images of new buildings and sights
of today’s Yerevan, thereby reviving memories about the city, where
the physical traces of the city’s past are being gradually removed,
and the material evidence reassuring our memories is only available
through photographs.
The
visual “narrative” of this series of works is implemented in the
mode of painting-photography and poetic manner, though the project’s
connotative accompaniment is a reexamination of urban matters, it is
socially engaged and refers to the crucial and topical issue of
commercial rearrangements of Yerevan city with distorted and fateful
results for local peoples.
Many
wonder how art can serve the social policies aiming at
decriminalization and fair resolution of social and corruption
issues. Thus, even though such forms of autonomous art might not be
able to solve any issues, they still can spread “…civil conduct,
self-improvement, local pride”, and this is visible in the case of
prominent expressions of civil activism in today's Yerevan.