Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale DI Venezia

YEREVAN – Following an open call announced by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, and the deliberation of a twelve-member jury, the proposal HYBRIDITY (previously Hybrid Identities) was selected to represent the Republic of Armenia at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The project is presented collaboratively between the architecture and design firm INVIVIA, founded in 1999 and based in Boston, MA, USA, and Storaket architectural studio, founded in 2007 and based in Yerevan, Armenia.

In today’s world of multifaceted cultures and relentless movements, we need to better understand how people develop a sense of identity and learn to coexist in varying places. Armenians have a singular heritage that has compelled them to connect diverse diasporic communities across the world through digital and virtual processes. The Armenian Pavilion will allow the international community to step into the Armenian experience, for a time.

HYBRIDITY is an experimental installation on the grounds of Ca’ Zenobio degli Armeni as well as a digital platform that encourage visitors to explore the fundamentals of human interaction through a physical and virtual expression of the living process among a hybridity of identities. As a representation of the Armenian experience of exile and survival, dissemination and coming together, HYBRIDITY tries to translate this human capacity to interact with each other and influence cultures both as individuals and as a community, in familiar as well as in unusual spaces.

HYBRIDITY will connect more than 80 countries of the Armenian Diaspora through a global virtual machine that digitally expands the architectural structures in Venice. Using Augmented Reality (AR), Armenians from around the world will be invited to share visual stories, videos and images of spaces they inhabit. Visitors of the exhibition will be able to experience the collective contributions interwoven into the physical environment in and around the grounds of Ca’ Zenobio degli Armeni.

The Armenian pavilion celebrates the resilience of a people, while remaining conscious of the universality of the issues at hand. At a time where humans face a number of planetary crises, HYBRIDITY highlights the human capacity to interact with each other in the realms of the local and the global, the national and the diaspora, the digital and the physical.

Name: HYBRIDITY
Curator: Allen Sayegh (Vosguerichian)
Exhibitors: INVIVIA and Storaket Architectural Studio
Pavilion designers: Allen Sayegh, Stefano Andreani, Humbi Song, Isa He
Commissioner: Tina Chakarian
Dates: August 28th – November 21st 2021; 10 am – 6 pm
Location: Palazzo Ca’ Zenobio
Sestiere Dorsoduro, 2596, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy
Website: http://venicearmenia.org
Press inquiries: labiennale@mincult.am
General information: lelag.vosguian@gmail.com