River, Road, Building and the City is a group exhibition created by participants of Lilit Matevosyan’s laboratory When I Forget Everything — I Begin to Remember. The laboratory focused on family archives and invited young artists to explore personal and urban stories that hold significance for them.

The exhibition presents four research-based projects. Alina Arakelian shows an installation inspired by photographs from a family album from the 1980s–1990s — a time of change and impending war. Through her mother’s story, Alina reveals the fragility of the moment when the familiar order of life falls apart and the future feels uncertain and alarming. Ekaterina Kochegarova seeks to clarify a long-held childhood memory of a trip with her grandmother, a memory that gradually reveals the difficult choice her family once faced. Leon Logua turns to his grandmother’s stories about Tqwarchal, discovering the city through her oral history. Nicole Bganba explores memories of Sovmin, the most significant ruin in the country.

The exhibition River, Road, Building and the City is an invitation to a dialogue about the importance and methods of preserving memory, and about how personal stories shape collective identity. It is an attempt to look into the stories of the past in order to better understand the present and outline the contours of the future.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a parallel public program, which will be announced separately.

The exhibition is presented with the support of the Asarkia Foundation.