SET ART-RESIDENCY PROGRAM

The SET Art-residency program provides an opportunity to make living conditions affordable for all artists who are interested to work in Armenia. We organize long term stays for artists from all over the world. Anyway if you are working as musician, painter, sculptor or in another branch of art - if you are interested to expose yourself to a new and deeply inspiring experience visit Armenia!

SET will not only assist you in finding an appropriate studio but also introduce you to the vivid art scene of the country. This includes intense personal encounters with Armenian artists. Part of SET Art-residency program is to offer the visiting artists the possibility to live in different regions. This will give him/her a chance to obtain a complete idea about the diversity of Armenian nature, about the customs and traditions, and about the life in different places.

SET Art-residency project is not only focused on professional artists. Moreover we offer every art loving visitor of our country to get an insight in the local art scene, to enjoy inspiring encounters with Armenian artist and to experience the unique spirit of Armenian creativity.

The overall aim of SET Art-residency program is to build a cultural bridge through communication and cognition thus serving as a link between art loving tourists, the country´s culture and artists who work in Armenia.

ART RESIDENCY: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONCEPT

Artists are often restless individuals eager to go to unusual places to find new inspirations. Today in a globalized world this can be any place where there is an option to create. SET Art-residency program intends to offer artists that very chance.

We are eager to welcome artists from everywhere in the world offering them an affordable opportunity to live and create here as well as to get acquainted with Armenian nature, culture and monuments. They will be introduced to other artists and to inspiring individuals belonging to different professions and spheres. These encounters will stimulate a group atmosphere which encourages all participants not only to exchange opinions but also to start cooperation in different projects.

The visitors will be given the best chance to get acquainted with Armenian nature. Metaphorically spoken Armenia - a country with many different ecological features - resembles an aesthete who is eager to reveal his surprising collection of treasures to other enthusiasts.

Armenia has picturesque corners of nature where one can find a big variety of flora and fauna. The number of different types of birds alone numbers over 360. Seeing and hearing them is an indescribable experience. For artists inspired by the spirit of Chagall and his painted flying dreams, these birds might be the symbol of paradise.

However, for other nature lovers Armenia has its unexpected surprises. American painter Rockwell Kent called Armenia ?A museum in the open air?, taking into account the country?s saturation with historical and cultural monuments embracing the space of time between primeval and today.

Armenian history is almost a closed page in the universal history book. In spite of the fact that Armenia?s soil and soul is saturated with emotive historical tales. Many localities are shrouded in legends and myths. The thickness of history somehow even separates some places from common belonging. People in Armenia know that the past is still able to change the meaning of their present existence.

ART IN ARMENIA TODAY

Because one of our principals is the preservation and development of cultural environment, we organize for the participants of our Art-residency program several visits to the leading artists´ studios. Some of them are dedicated to traditional art others are crossing to the contemporary approach: painters, poets, architects, sculptors, musicians, actors etc. The atmosphere of Armenian art in one hand contains ethno-cultural individual concentration, in another, invisible originality and frankness, with hopeless ignorance towards trade and gain. Art is not consumed yet, artists are not commercials, and they live with self-sufficing ideals.

In Armenia the idea of ownership in art has a different meaning in comparison to other parts of the world. Here people are eager to share the free and frankly spirit of art with others. After centuries of cultural suppression artists are aware of the traps of ownership, they are sensitive for any hints of commercialism or suppression. Thus many Armenian artists are escaping from any compulsion to indescribable freedom.

In spite of their knowledge that sometimes their presented works might not be individual or sophisticated enough to keep up with international standards, many Armenian artists feel themselves as representatives of a vanishing type of humankind. Their self-perception often implicates the image of a man who is late for the train of civilization. Even if the globalized art scene considers them as strange, many Armenian artists keep their frank feelings as a treasure thus still clinging to the idea of art as an absolute demand beyond consume, commercialism and daily fashion.

In Armenia, you will often find art which is presented not in studios, galleries or other closed surroundings but in nature. The harmony of creation and created fascinates many Armenian artists. Due to this fact many creative individuals do not work in the capitol but prefer to live close to nature. Even in the remotest villages one can meet many interesting people living and working there.
Armenian artists are eager to experience their inner freedom and at the same time to be inspired by encounters with the outside world. The Art-residency project is a way to unite these desires. Through implementation of the Art-residency project Armenia could become a centre of communication, a laboratory and a school for art interested people from all over the world.

The inward developing of Armenian art has unpredictable bends that can cause many surprises for the sensitive eye. Artists living and creating in extreme conditions will be in the focus of our attention. We will try to establish new ways of contemporary dialogue between artists belonging to different contexts. For the determination of our common goals, let us refer to the words of J.A. Rivier about the concept of eco-museums. ?Culture, in the name of which eco-museums exist, must be percept in its widest meaning, as it aims to represent the values and artistic expressions of that culture, without considering the class, to which the people, creating the art belong to. The variety of the latter is infinite, so the eco-museums aren?t summarized in their self, but they cooperate with the external world?.