Mkrtich Tonoyan
Exhibition & Residency:
October 11 – November 14, 2012

Mkrtich Tonoyan is an Armenian artist, president of the AKOS Cultural NGO, founder of the “Art Centre of Social Studies” (ACOSS) international artists-in-residence program, and is a member of Artists’ Union of Armenia.

From 1990-1994 Tonoyan participated in the Karabakh War, experiencing all the horrors and suffering of death, destruction, injury and despair, events that continue to have a profound impact on the direction of his creative and social practice. Tonoyan turned to contemporary art as a space of possibility to address crisis and change in all its dimensions: personal, political, ideological and social. He works in a new form of conceptual art, called “Military Art”, founded by Alexander Melkonyan.

Active in the contemporary art world since graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Yerevan in 2002, Tonoyan has presented projects at numerous national and international art events and galleries including: the Gyumri Biennale in Armenia, the Artistirium in Georgia, FormVerk in Sweden, the HweiLan International Artists Workshop in Taiwan, the Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece, the Stuttgarter Kunstverein in Germany, the Water Tower festival in Bulgaria, Cló artists’ workshop in Ireland, Galerie La Vielle Poste, Larroque, France and Artcore Gallery in Paris. He regularly presents lectures on his work and Armenian contemporary art.

As president of the AKOS Cultural NGO Tonoyan collaborates with organizations internationally to develop cultural exchange opportunities, and locally to develop socially engaged projects in the peripheries of Armenia. In 2010, Tonoyan was awarded a mobility grant from the Euro Cultural Foundation to research models of artist residencies in the UK, and in 2011 he was awarded professional development funding from the Open Society Foundation to research artist residencies management practice in the USA.

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