1950 - 2022

Born in Ashnak (AM).

Hamlet Hovsepian is one of the most significant figures of the Armenian contemporary art scene and a pioneer in video art in the Caucasian area. He has been working with film and video since the early 1970s. During his stay in Moscow between 1978 and 1980, Hovsepian was influenced by the city’s avant-garde and continued to incorporate its elements into his work. Since his return to Armenia, the artist has been based in his native village, Ashnak, just outside Yerevan, which for him forms an experimental laboratory “as a front against society’s norms and pacified rules of conduct”. There he has created conceptual film works, characterized by an absurd simplicity, abstract space and long duration. In these works Hovsepian emphasizes emptiness as a possibility of critique on the passivity of our society.