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Mkrtich Tonoyan
November 16, 2013
November 16, 2013
Artists on the Front Line – Mkrtich Tonoyan
Strandline Curatorial Collective (Organizer)
Between October and November, artist Mktrich Tonoyan will visit Regina as part of a residency program with Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum and Strandline Curatorial Collective supported by the Saskatchewan Arts Board. Tonoyan will be presenting as part of Artists on the Frontline at Neutral Ground [Contemporary Art Forum] at 8 pm, 16 November, 2013.
Artist Bio
Mkrtich Tonoyan is a conceptual artist who creates performance work and installations influenced by Armenia’s Alexander Melkonyan’s theory and practice of “Military Art.” Military Art is conceived as a strategy of resistance to the violence and domination of hegemonic power via the re-appropriation of military aesthetics and artifacts. Tonoyan’s performative actions are designed to interrogate the hierarchies and binaries of hegemonic militaristic thinking, such as war and peace, moral and immoral, good and evil – perspectives that, he argues, limit knowledge and cripple diversity of perspective.
Mkrtich Tonoyan is an Armenian artist, president of the AKOS Cultural NGO, founder of the “Art Centre of Social Studies” (ACOSS) international artists-in-residence program, and is a member of Artists’ Union of Armenia. From 1990-1994 Tonoyan participated in the Karabakh War, experiencing all the horrors and suffering of death, destruction, injury and despair, events that continue to have a profound impact on the direction of his creative and social practice. Tonoyan turned to contemporary art as a space of possibility to address crisis and change in all its dimensions: personal, political, ideological and social.
About Artists on the Front Line
Artists on the Front Line is an ongoing programming partnership between the most significant cultural institutions in Saskatchewan spearheaded by Strandline Curatorial Collective. Mktrich Tonoyan is the second initiative of this unique collaboration, which will draw on the strengths of art institutions to provide space for thought-provoking dialogue and alternative perspectives on war and militarism for a cross section of the community.
