Yerevan Hosts Its First International Contemporary Art Festival

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NEXA 2026 × TRANSITION TO 8 | YEREVAN SHOWCASE

AIR - FELT AND TANGIBLE

NEXA 2026 is an international contemporary art festival whose inaugural edition took place in Yerevan from 3 to 8 September 2026. The festival explored air pollution as an invisible yet tangible environment that exists between us and shapes our everyday lives.

Air pollution is one of the urgent environmental challenges of our time. In Yerevan, PM2.5 fine particulate matter is a particular concern, as these particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and harm human health.

Pollution also works like a boomerang: what we release into the environment eventually returns to our own bodies.

NEXA approaches air not only as an environmental issue, but also as a bodily, social and urban experience, raising questions about our surroundings, city life and our responsibility towards the environment we share.

The festival’s inaugural edition took place at the former Hayreniq Cinema building, which became more than an exhibition venue: it formed part of the festival’s conceptual and spatial context. After years of limited presence in the city’s cultural life, the building seemed to have an opportunity to breathe again, becoming a space for art, encounters and dialogue.

NEXA 2026 × Transition to 8

The exploration of the relationships between air, the body and the urban environment continued through Transition to 8: European Societies in Flux (TT8), whose Yerevan showcase was presented as part of NEXA 2026.

TT8 brings together social research, technology and contemporary art to explore how people and communities respond to air pollution, and how data, sensory experiences and artistic interventions can reveal our surroundings in new ways.

Created by Panos Gkiokas, the project is implemented in collaboration with MENTOR (Greece), MoTA — Museum of Transitory Art (Slovenia), Electroni[k] (France) and Today Art Initiative (Armenia). It is co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme.

Curators

Founder and Curator: Lilit Stepanyan

Co-curators:

● Siranush Kostanyan

● Ekaterina Drakunova

NEXA 2026 Participating Artists

● Edgar Amroyan - Armenia

● Davit Kochunts - Armenia

● Samvel Saghatelian - Armenia

● Mariam Papoyan - Armenia

● Diana Karapetyan - Armenia

● Siranush Kostanyan - Armenia