Nvard Yerkanian
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 4 min read
Nvard Yerkanian is an Armenian artist with a background in architecture, and that training runs through her illustrations. Her project “Fragile Concrete” focuses on Soviet-era modernist buildings, many of which have been demolished or left in decay. Through bold color and stripped-down forms, she reimagines these structures as prints and posters, making them accessible beyond their physical sites. What began as her personal response to loss has grown into a body of work that links memory, place, and identity. Alongside her studio practice, she also collaborates on design and publishing projects, expanding the ways her images circulate and connect with audiences.
Q: You first trained as an architect. How does that way of thinking still guide the way you build an image on paper?
A: Creating an image is a bit like building an image; I’m not just creating a visual representation, I’m engaging with history, ideas, context, and cultural meaning. My architectural training gave me a deep appreciation for the built environment and how it shapes collective memory. This translates into my illustration practice as a commitment to understanding and preserving architectural heritage, not only documenting it.
Q: As a kid you saw Soviet modernist buildings as if they were spaceships. When you return to them now through drawing, what memories or feelings resurface?
A: When I revisit these structures through my illustrations, I'm transported back to that sense of wonder and possibility I felt as a child. There's this beautiful tension between the innocent fascination I had then, seeing these buildings as portals to unknown worlds, and the adult awareness I have now of their fragility and abandonment,
which brings with it a deep sense of responsibility for preservation. Even if we can't always save the monuments themselves, we must preserve the memory of them and what they represented.
Many of these buildings have been transformed over the years, their structures and surroundings damaged or transformed so dramatically that the original form is often hard to see. In my illustrations, I strip away these layers of alteration to bring the focus back to the original form and shape, allowing people to appreciate the thought and vision of the architects without the visual noise of present-day changes.
Q: In "Fragile Concrete" you reimagine fading monuments in bright color. What pushed you to take that approach?
A: The bright colors were essential to bring back the forward-looking energy these buildings once held. They were born from bold dreams about the future, and I wanted to restore that spirit of possibility rather than only document their decay. The palette transforms them from scattered ruins into a vision of hope, progress, and transformation. The colors also carry psychological weight. While working on the project, I spoke to people of different generations about their memories, dreams, and fantasies connected to these monuments. Sometimes those emotional responses influenced my choice of color. The colors do not conceal the reality of abandonment; if anything, they manifest as a hope for a renewed appreciation and sense of resilience.
Q: Many of these structures are disappearing or left empty. Do you see your work as a kind of archive, or more as a personal reinterpretation of what they could be?
A: It's both, really. The work definitely functions as an archive, preserving not only the physical forms of these buildings, but their original spirit and the memories people associate with them. But it's also very much a reinterpretation, an alternate reality that bridges childhood wonder with urgent questions about what we choose to remember and preserve.
My artistic approach is fundamentally driven by the cause of architectural heritage preservation. As art curator Vigen Galstyan writes in his introduction to my book, these illustrations tackle a subject that was "found frayed, fragmented and decontextualized." It's essentially a salvage operation that restores the ravaged integrity of buildings that, in some cases, no longer exist. Through this duality, I hope we remember not only what was, but also what could still be.
Q: You often move your illustrations into books, posters, and everyday objects. What do you want people to experience when these images enter their daily routines?
A: By materializing these architectural memories as everyday objects I'm spreading this heritage back into contemporary life where it can continue shaping how we imagine our relationship to place and memory.Many people who own my book and art prints no longer live in Armenia, or perhaps only visited briefly. For them, these images serve as a reminder and a way to stay connected to that experience. There's something powerful about turning architectural documentation into lived experience,
making these extraordinary monuments part of people's personal landscapes again, even when the original buildings are disappearing or transformed beyond recognition.
Q: Showing "Fragile Concrete" internationally, what was the most unexpected reaction you heard from an audience far from Armenia?
A: The most surprising response came from people with no connection to Armenia, who related to the experience of watching their own architectural heritage fade or transform. Many spoke of brutalist buildings in their cities that they had never looked at twice, until they saw them through this lens of renewed cultural memory. I think this response speaks to the universality of modernist ideas themselves. These architectural principles and aspirations weren't unique to Armenia, they were part of a global movement. That shared language of modernism helped people relate to my work even when they'd never seen these specific buildings. It made me realize that "Fragile Concrete" isn't just about Armenian monuments, but about how we all process the relationship between memory, place, and the passage of time.
