Published in 2011, Queered: What’s To Be Done With Xcentric Art by the Queering Yerevan (QY) collective is their first publication and one of the first [*] collections of queer art, photography, experimental writing, critical texts, and email correspondences.
The editors are Shushan Avagyan, lucine talayan, and Arpi Adamyan.
Avagyan is the author of the novel Girk-Anvernagir, or Book-Untitled and Zarubyani Kanayq, Zarubyan’s Women. As a translator, she has translated a volume of S. Kurghinian’s poetry and V. Shklovsky’s A Hunt for Optimism. Her articles and translations have appeared in Contemporary Women’s Writing, The Book of Saint Ejneb, Asymptote, and Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism.
talayan is a visual artist and one of the founding members of the Queering Yerevan Collective. She received her BA in painting from Terlemezyan Yerevan State College of Fine Arts and an MA in set design from Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinema. Her work includes the film PostDIY, the photograph series Be careful…Before Entering.
Adamyan is a multi-media graphic, photomontage, and video artist living in Yerevan, Armenia. Her art installation The City of Dove Women debuted in 2019. She is a multimedia artist based in New York and Yerevan. In 2007 she co-founded Queering Yerevan Collective with fellow artists, writers, curators and activists.
Since the word da-RO-ri-NAG-vadz had no place, no equal, nor a companion in my Armenian imaginary, I recalled the countless times I have bitched to friends about the limitations of the Armenian language, say, in naming certain things or sentiments, including expressions while making love. […] How does the tension between the universal and particular reconcile in the language with which one makes love?!
Neery Melkonian, Queered: What’s To Be Done with Xcentric Art
The following authors and artists are featured in this anthology collection:
- Neery Melkonian
- Nelli Sargsyan-Pitman
- Meline Ter-Minasian
- Tatia Skhirtladze
- Lilia Khachatryan
- Araks Nerkararyan
- Lucie Abdalian
- Lara Aharonian
- Melissa Boyajian
- Tsomak Oga
- Eka Ketsbaia
- Lusine Chergeshtyan
- Anzhela Harutyunyan
- Astghik Melkonyan
- Adrineh Der-Boghossian
- Alina Martiros
- Lusine Vayachyan
Queering Yerevan describes itself as, “a collaborative project of queer and straight artists, writers, cultural critics, and activists to be realized within the framework of the QY collective. It takes as its point of departure concrete mnemonic experiences of concrete queer artists in a specific time and space: Yerevan, 2000s.”
You may have to search around to find a copy to purchase. The best place to start is at Abril Books.
