Armenia (Republic of)

Gharīb denotes a sense of belonging and estrangement permeating Arabic, Armenian, and Farsi imaginaries. The notion has long been associated with the underground, clandestine activities of music making, illegal social clubs, psychotropic substance trade, and the political margins. Alternate tuning systems, modes of sonic dissent, and gentle oscillations between mystic thought and charlatanism compose the cosmology of the Gharīb Pavilion. In this exhibition by artist Andrius Arutiunian, the gharīb presents itself as a form of dissonance with Western-influenced understandings of time, rhythm, and attunement, both musical and political. A certain musical score emerges, dotted by the voices of the unheard, the disappeared, and the radical.