Women’s world: through art to self-expression

The “Women of the South Caucasus” show presented 60 works by photographers from Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, authored by Albert Babelyan, Natela Grigalashvili and Sanan Aleskerov.

“The main aim of this initiative is to unite the women of the region because their concerns and problems are the same,” says Consuelo Vidal, the UN Resident Coordinator.

The photographs depict the routine concerns of young and elderly women as they go about their everyday work. Village women carry water, wash their laundry manually, till, hew wood and bake bread.

The difficulties of life are similar both in the Armenian and other countries’ photos. If the names of the photographers were removed it would be impossible to identify the individual countries – all of the pictures show struggling women of the Caucasus.

“The image of woman in the Caucasus is the same, routines press on everyone. I have purposefully avoided hanging the photographs of the three authors according to their nationalities, for there are almost no differences in the pictures,” says the UNIFEM – UN Development Fund for Women, program coordinator Ilona Ter-Minasyan.

The separate photographic and painting sections of the exhibition drastically differ in their moods. One shows a series of black and white photos in which Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani women, who have all seen life’s hardships, are bent under everyday struggles.

The other is dominated by light and color. Canvases painted with gentle feminine taste and bright colors seem to inspire hope that the difficulties in the previous showroom are transient.

“Art makes one forget everyday problems if not forever, then at least for a moment. With this exhibition we encourage Armenian women to be creative, to save their creative instincts from being oppressed by everyday problems,” says Nanni Oskanian, the initiator of the “Creative Synthesis” exhibition and chairwoman of the Association of Diplomats’ Wives.

Oskanian, the wife of Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, encourages visitors to the exhibition to buy the paintings, since all of the proceeds will go towards construction of a playground and the rebuilding of several parks in Dilijan.

Female painters of different generations are represented at the show, including Armine Kalents, Seda Bekaryan and Knarik Hovhannisyan. Oskanian says that such exhibitions aim to introduce women artists to a wider circle of society and to include them in dynamic activities.

“I hope the hard ice of the notion that woman is born only to raise children and keep the home, which exists in the public mind, will soon be broken. Unfortunately there are still too many people in Armenia who have thiss idea,” says painter Suzanne Mesropyan.

Many Armenian men in the 21st Century share the words of Plato, who lived in the 5th Century BC, that “the virtue of a woman is in the good management of the household by maintaining everything that exists there and staying obedient to the husband”.

The organizers of the exhibition fight against this problem and call on women of the Caucasus to be active, to make decisions and to improve their lives by their own initiative.

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