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The New Illuminations: Women Artists of Armenia

The New Illuminations: Book Art by Women Artists of Gyumri, Armenia 2024

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Thank you to every supporter of New Illuminations who has helped bring this project to Gyumri, Armenia for four successful residencies and exhibitions. 

In June 2024, Suzi Banks Baum will travel to Gyumri, Armenia to continue teaching the book arts to an advanced group of Armenian women artists and to introduce new artists to hand bound books made in the Coptic and Armenian binding style. New Illuminations helps build creative community and sparks new opportunities for the artists to sell books and to teach workshops. 
Aided by her coordinator and translator, Annie Ginosyan, the team hopes to continue the work that gained momentum in November 2019. Care will be taken as these plans are made. The armed conflict with Azerbaijan continues to deeply impact the lives of Armenians. Final plans will be announced on this page and on Suzi's website.

New Illuminations strikes light in a dark corner of Armenia. 

The books the artists make blaze new trails in their lives.

  • Your past donations have positively impacted the artists and their families.
  • You’ve helped New Illuminations embody goals of sustainability and support. 
  • Please donate to fund the next steps of teaching advanced artists the art of teaching.

The hand bound books made by the New Illuminations artists are a contemporary expression of an ancient tradition, once largely dominated by men. New Illuminations revitalizes the Armenian binding style in a contemporary application and allows the artists to create new books in this archetypal art form.  Suzi will continue interviews to help share the stories of the lives of women in a patriarchal society and give them the tools to share their own stories.
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Ani Katchatryan says:

"This project helped me get in touch with the book more intensely; to become interested not just in the content, but how it was created, sewn, and born. I have become more skilled in book art. Book is my relative, the only one who listens and carries my feelings in it. The books I have made are always at hand; I write, paint, and represent an image created at the moment on the paper."

Every return to Armenia seeds these women’s future as artists and teachers, capable of carrying this treasured practice of illuminated manuscripts forward in time, in new hands, with new voices.


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MANY THANKS!

Պատրաստված է սիրով










Learn More: https://www.suzibanksbaum.com/new-illuminations