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ManBan Visual Culture Archive, Yerevan (2026)

Based in Yerevan ManBan is a multidisciplinary platform that collects, researches and publishes on Armenian and international art and visual culture of the modern era.

26/10/2025

It's just a small fragment, but one that blasts open so many thrilling questions and possibilities about Armenian visual culture and its (lost) traditions. This painted and glazed terracotta tile piece was discovered just a few days ago, during the excavations of the small bathhouse in Lori Fortress - the capital of the 11-13th century Tashir-Dzoraget Kingdom in northern Armenia.

Very little of the material culture of the Armenian royal and noble houses has survived to our days, so the title is a precious little window into the tastes and lifestyles of the local nobility during the high medieval era. While fragments of rich interior decorations in fresco, wood, plaster, fireclay and stone have been discovered during the excavations of palaces in Ani and Dvin, glazed tile decor is generally attributed to the outside influences from later periods under Monghol, Seljuk and especially Persian dominance. Though it remains to be precisely dated, judging from its style, this tile is quite evidently from an earlier era and differs from well-known examples of Chinese, Persian, Arab and Seljuk ceramic production, suggesting local, or regional manufacture. Peacocks were a common motif in medieval Armenian art and there are numerous extraordinary examples of the bird in Armenian illuminated manuscripts. But we have comparably few uses of the bird from secular contexts.

Often associated with royalty, the appearance of the bird in this particular bathhouse in Lori Fortress suggests that this smaller structure was used primarily by the nobility, whose abode (still to be excavated) must have been nearby. And if this was only their bathhouse interior, one can only imagine how exquisitely clad the palace interiors must have been. Did the kings of Lori-Berd also keep the birds in their gardens (not an uncommon custom for the royal houses in the Caucasus), was the tile the work of local craftsmen as the abundance of painted and glazed ceramics in Lori seems to suggest, or was this an expensive import from East Asia or Europe (India or Spain, for example), which speaks of this small capital's extensive trade links and extravagant lifestyle?

Regardless of its origins, the discovery of the tile speaks of the lavish, highly developed culture of Lori's medieval elites, whose forgotten pages are slowly being revealed with each season of excavations at this fascinating archaeological site.

22/09/2025

This September 21 marks the 34th anniversary of Armenia’s independence. The return of Armenian sovereignty—on a small part of its historical homeland—was nothing short of miraculous after centuries of imperial domination, genocide, and totalitarian rule. This hard-won achievement was made possible by the enduring resilience of Armenian cultural identity, which has inspired generations to resist erasure and pursue freedom.

In the early 1990s, one of the surprising pillars of Armenia’s emerging sovereignty was its contemporary art scene, which thrived, despite the absence of supporting infrastructures. Amid economic collapse, political isolation, and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the new republic had few resources to assert itself globally and the local avant-garde circles was vital in offsetting this paucity of representational means. This short-lived but momentous relationship between artists and state formation, allowed for a direct engagement of cutting-edge artistic ideas in the shaping nascent state ideologies.

Thanks to a generous donation by Marine Haroyan, ManBan Archive owns two rare posters from 1989 by one of the figureheads of Armenian contemporary art and design, Kamo Nigarian (1951–2011). The posters were printed for the Pan-Armenian National Movement’s 1990 pre-election campaign, which led to the Communist Party’s historic defeat in Armenia’s parliament, laying the groundwork for independence and the collapse of the USSR in the following year.

Nigarian’s double posters offer a minimalist yet powerful design: two triangles in Armenian tricolors evoke collective agency, and dynamic progress rooted in tradition. Merging references to the Russian avant-garde, Armenian iconography (Mount Ararat), and American color-field painting, Nigarian creates a distilled image-icon that intones its political imperatives without resorting to illustrative means. The multicolored triangle—representing Armenia’s diverse society—pierces a black wall, symbolizing the collapse of totalitarianism. In this, his work crystallizes the hopes of a nation, reflecting a rare and potent alignment between art and politics.

14/08/2025

Glass-making has long marked civilizational progress—a clear emblem of high culture. Owing to its technical complexity and cost, few nations maintained stable traditions, even after industrialization. Alongside the famed Italian, French, Czech, German, and British schools of ‘art’ glass—Murano, Bohemia, Nachtmann, Baccarat, Lalique, Waterford—other countries developed distinctive, localized aesthetics now gaining wider recognition.

While Scandinavian glass has been valued by collectors for decades, its global surge in popularity is recent. Founded in the 19th century, major Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish makers thrived in the interwar and post-war 20th century, paralleling Scandinavia’s conceptually radical industrial design.
Marked by a near-reverence for the material, these makers used minimal decorative elements, letting the glass itself shine. This ascetic, minimalist style became a Nordic hallmark, yet each country forged its own stylistic trend: Sweden favored architectural, geometric forms, Denmark stressed functionality and material purity, while Finland drew its inspiration from organic, frosty shapes.

Coolly rational yet quietly romantic, Scandinavian glass epitomizes the distilled essence of mid-century modernism that made a notable impact on post-1950s glass production in countries like Canada, USA and all across USSR. Recently, ManBan Archive acquired some exquisite examples from leading factories such as Kosta Boda, Orrefors, Holmegaard, Iittala, Humpilla, featuring designs by artists like Pertti Santalahti, Maija Carlson, Per Lütken, Michael Bang, Sven Palmqvist —a collection that is the largest and most representative of its kind in Armenia.

1) ‘Filigree’ flower vase by Maija Carlson, Kumela, 1960s, Finland
2) Desert bowl from Iitalla, Findland, 1970s
3) Flower vase by Pertti Santalahti, Humplla, 1970s, Finland
4) Crystal flower vase, Strömberghyttan (?), 1960s, Sweden
5) Hourglass vase, Sea Glassbruk, 1960s, Sweden
6) Flower vase by Sven Palmqvist, Orrefors, 1950s, Sweden
7-9) Flower vases by Per Lutken, Holmegaard, 1962, 1959 and 1954, Denmark
10) Flower vase, Holmegaard, 1960s, Finland

08/03/2025

Any day is a good day to celebrate women, their role in society and achievements, but March 8 reminds us of the long struggle for female emancipation, which continues worldwide. Hence, a key focus of ManBan Archive’s collection is the work of Armenian and international women artists. Among them, Gohar Fermanyan (1899-1958) is crucial as one of the first Soviet-Armenian women to receive academic training. Born in Tiflis, she studied at VKHUTEIN in Leningrad under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin before moving to Yerevan in 1927. She became active in the local art scene, teaching at the Technical College, exhibiting, and working on public projects. Trained as a monumentalist, she drafted large-scale frescoes, but none were realized. Instead, she developed a distinct painting style influenced by primitivism and various strands of expressionism. Her early work aligned with the avant-garde trends, aiming to express the radical transformations of the socialist reality and often depicted the proletariat, Armenia’s industrialization, and modern women. However, with the onset of Stalinist repressions in the 1930s, Fermanyan abandoned this experimental trajectory to avoid persecution, adopting a more conservative style in line with socialist realism. Yet, avant-garde concepts lingered in her later work, as seen in Woman in Red Blouse from ManBan’s collection. Likely painted in the early 1940s, the portrait’s dramatic asceticism with its minimalist palette of red, white and blue characterises Fermanyan’s interest in reducing the visual subject to distinct color fields, while drawing attention to the painterly surface with bold brushstrokes and blank canvas areas.. The psychological depth of the young woman’s portrayal highlights her intellectual and professional presence, resisting objectification and allegory, which were so prevalent in mid-20th-century depictions of women in Armenian and global art. 

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