About the Shushi Art Project

The Shushi Art Project, a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization, commissioned a contemporary art festival in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabagh in summer 2012.

The theme of the inaugural festival was Land and Technology, with land representing human subsistence and an indisputable socio-political value and technology embracing life's virtual propagation and articulation of a craft. Land and technology, though mutually exclusive, interface with human consciousness through our desire to revolutionize technology and conserve our attachment to our motherland, thus improving our contemporary reality.

The festival was a large-scale biennial event leveraging a platform for international artists and organizations. Watch the video about the festival.

In October 2012, Tumo hosted an exhibition of artworks featured at the "Land and Technology" Contemporary Art Festival held in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabagh earlier that month. The festival was organized by the Shushi Art Project, a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization. Local and international artists showcased their talent and work based on the festival theme. The exhibition was paired with a series of lectures for Tumo students by the artists themselves on the concept of contemporary art and the specific ideas behind their respective works:

Mary Moon, ''Dream and reality or John Cage dream''

Harutyun Zulumyan, "History - a theme for contemporary art"

Sahak Petrosian’s, one of the founders of Armenian avant garde

Aleksey Manukian, "Art - the reflection of time"

Shushi Art Project's artistic trio, Vachag Ter Sarkissian, Ara Oshagan and Samvel Saghatelyan