383 Souls

In a theatre, the light in the hall is only bright enough for the audience to find their seats. The real light belongs to the stage.

For the first ARTsakh Fest, held in the long-closed Vahram Papazian Drama Theatre in Stepanakert, Galstyan reversed this. He fixed a bulb above each of the hall’s 383 seats and filled the empty auditorium with light.

In Armenian, hogi means both a soul and a person. The work counted the missing audience one by one, and waited for the day the theatre would work again and the light would pass from the hall back to the stage.

• Hyperallergic, 4 October 2019: A Transformative Art Festival Is Mounted Again in the Breakaway Republic of Karabakh