Arpine Tokmajyan

I was born and educated in Yerevan, Armenia, where I graduated from the Fine Art Academy and developed my artistic practice. Since 2015, I have been based in the United Kingdom.

Red Kite

2025

Watercolour on paper

45 x 35 cm

Over the past three decades, I have participated in more than 50 exhibitions, art festivals, and biennials across Armenia and internationally, including Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Iran, Russia, and Georgia. My work was included in the Armenian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2010, I was selected by the international jury of Kulturkontakt Austria for an artist residency in Vienna, and in 2013 I was invited for a residency in Graz, Austria.

In the last five years, I have exhibited in five shows in the UK. My work was selected for The Ironstone Art Prize by a jury including Philip Mould OBE, Deborah Smith (Director of the Arts Council Collection), Paul Hobson (Director of Modern Art Oxford), and Finlay Taylor (Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art). Additionally, my work Red Kite received a judges’ commendation in another UK exhibition.

My practice explores the human experience as it moves between the natural and virtual realms, examining the reciprocal relationship between individuals, society, and their environments. In a time shaped by constant information flow, surveillance, and digital mediation, I engage with questions of identity and authenticity in contemporary life.

Working across installation, photography, video, sculpture, sound, object art, and painting, I allow the concept of each project to determine its medium, fostering an open and dynamic dialogue with the viewer.

In recent years, through both two- and three-dimensional works, I have focused on conveying delicacy, transparency, and ambiguity as reflections of the instability of our time. Layered watercolor creates subtle translucency in my paintings, while my sculptures, constructed from lightweight and fragile materials, emphasize the tension between fragility and resilience.

People

2026

Watercolour and pencil on paper

50 x 70 cm

Puzzled_1 (portrait)

2020

Watercolour on paper

39 x 28 cm

Someone

2024

Paper, wire, plastic hooks, wood

50 x 20 x 30 cm

Transparent Human Being #01

2010

Transparent film sheets, fishing line, plastic hooks

70 x 160 x 50 cm