YEREVAN, Armenia — In the cold, damp basement of a house in one of Yerevan’s suburbs, Arnold Meliksetyan, a 76-year-old painter and sculptor, has found the only space he can afford to rent — a single, cramped room, small and bare, where he must live, sleep, and work. An old, rickety chair doubles as his bed. His canvases and paints are scattered across the room, blending into the sparse surroundings. This basement is his entire world now, a contrast to the life he once had in Nagorno Karabakh or Artsakh, as the indigenous Armenians call their ancestral homeland.
Meliksetyan is among the 120,000 Armenians forcibly displaced from Artsakh following Azerbaijan’s large-scale offensive in 2023, which claimed the entire territory after a nearly 10-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the lifeline road linking Artsakh to Armenia. This plunged the population into a severe humanitarian crisis, subjecting them to a starvation siege.
A year and a half later, those who took refuge in Armenia face numerous obstacles, from housing and employment to healthcare, education, and legal concerns related to citizenship. But the unique challenges of Artsakh’s artists are often overshadowed.
Artsakh’s millennia-old cultural heritage is being destroyed — recent documentation shows Azerbaijani authorities taking down churches, entire settlements, and historical structures. Protecting the region’s intangible heritage has become the mission of the newly established Center for Preservation of Artsakh Culture in Yerevan, whose founder, Apres Zohrabyan, told Hyperallergic that it is crucial to find resources to safeguard cultural collectives and self-employed artists. Zohrabyan also aims to unite forcibly displaced Armenians around cultural events to preserve inter-community ties among residents from the occupied territories.
While 150 displaced artists are employed across various cultural organizations, there’s a significant gap in addressing the needs of nearly 1,400 displaced individuals seeking work in the cultural sector. According to Zohrabyan, only the Artsakh State Dance Ensemble has received temporary funding, from the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund.
During their chaotic forced exodus from Artsakh, with the help of his self-employed artist friend Artsiv Lalayan and local government officials who lent a car, Meliksetyan managed to save a few of his sculptures and paintings. But many others were left behind.
“It’s like abandoning your own child,” he told Hyperallergic, the pain evident in his voice. “You stand there, looking at your creations, and you’re forced to decide which to take and which to leave behind. I can’t forgive myself for that.”
Transporting the larger sculptures was nearly impossible.
This wasn’t the first time Meliksetyan had been forced to part with his art. Before the 2020 war, he had participated in an annual international sculpture symposium in Shushi, leaving behind many of his sculptural creations on outdoor display at the local Museum of Fine Arts. However, after Shushi (known as “Shusha” in Azerbaijani) was occupied by Azerbaijani forces in early November 2020, the fate of those sculptures became uncertain.
Months later, the research initiative Caucasian Heritage Watch (CHW) released satellite images of the outdoor art park taken on April 10 and June 5. In the first, the numerous sculptures stood tall; in the second, not only were the sculptures gone but the foundation below them had also disappeared entirely.
The systematic erasure of Armenian cultural heritage by the Azerbaijani regime appears to be aimed at obliterating any trace of Armenian identity in Artsakh, in line with President Ilham Aliyev’s October 2020 wartime address to his nation, in which the Azerbaijani autocrat vowed to leave “no trace’’ of Armenians. This has been characterized by CHW and others as a deliberate act by the Azerbaijani regime, aimed at obliterating any remnant of Armenian identity in Artsakh.
Despite the hardships, the moment Meliksetyan arrived in Armenia, he began piecing his life back together.
“Creating is my way of life; perhaps it’s a form of self-defense. Sculpting is healing, a form of struggle, and therapy all at once,” Meliksetyan explained.
So long as he draws breath, Meliksetyan has never considered abandoning his art. He began sculpting during the Karabakh Movement in 1988, a pivotal moment when Armenians demanded the reunification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Soviet Armenia, dedicating much of his energy to this craft. However, after the forced displacement, he finds himself painting more often. In his small basement room, he lacks both the space and tools necessary for sculpting, even if he had the desire to do so.
For Meliksetyan, art is not just a passion — it’s an essential part of his existence.
“Sculpting and painting go deeper than love; they tap into emotions that are more profound. You may love someone else, but in this craft, you cannot deceive,” he said.
Meliksetyan relies solely on his pension and a government aid of approximately 50,000 drams, around $130, barely enough to cover rent and utility bills. Additionally, he struggles to sell his artwork, leaving him in a constant battle to make ends meet. Although he remains in Armenia, committed to his craft, he laments that some artists have left for Russia due to financial difficulties.
This reality is particularly painful for Meliksetyan, given Russia’s historical exploitation of Armenians.
“They have used us and discarded us for centuries,” he said. “Before the Russians came to our region, the five melikdoms of Artsakh enjoyed significant autonomy, and Artsakh was flourishing. Everything changed with their arrival.”
This exploitation was evident not only during the loss of Artsakh, Meliksetyan said, but also during the Soviet Union years when Artsakh faced pressures from both Soviet Russia and Soviet Azerbaijan. During that time, creating art with Armenian themes or even learning the Armenian language and history was often met with restrictions.
Despite the challenges, Meliksetyan expresses a willingness to return to Azerbaijani-occupied Artsakh if security can be guaranteed.
“Whether or not they are our neighbors, we must find a way to live together,” he reflected. “I didn’t just lose my homeland, I lost my home, which I will never have here.”
Zohrabyan links the lack of funding for artists to immigration, explaining that those receiving support remain in Armenia, while others struggling to find work emigrate, mainly to Russia.
Self-employed artists in particular face significant hurdles. Meliksetyan has gotten help from a former classmate from 50 years ago who has tirelessly tried to support their displaced friend by providing him with painting supplies and other resources. Additionally, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Yerevan has provided storage space for his sculptures and other works rescued from Artsakh. However, this support is far from sufficient to meet his needs.
Ayntap, a village in Armenia’s Ararat Province located south of Yerevan, is now home to Artsiv Lalayan, who has been displaced multiple times. After the 2020 war, Lalayan and his family were forcibly displaced from Hadrut to Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh. Their second such instance brought them to Ayntap, where he now lives with his wife, five children, and parents. It is ironic that he has settled in a town that was itself named for the Armenians fleeing the historical city of Aintab, in present-day Turkey, during the 1915–23 Armenian Genocide.
Lalayan’s elder brother Khachatur was killed during the first Artsakh war, and his second brother Vahram, a historian and theologian, was killed during the second war in their backyard. In 2023, Lalayan lost his ancestral homeland, where he began his artistic career in 1993, painting while simultaneously serving as the director of the Armenak Khanperyants Museum in his native village. Now he has no information about the fate of that museum, or his paintings, but he believes Azerbaijani forces most likely destroyed them.
For Lalayan also, the lack of a studio is a major challenge, as he now shares a living space with his large family of 10. Along with his wife, fellow painter Tatev Amirjanyan, they manage to keep creating under one roof. Amirjanyan began painting during the first Artsakh war, when she was still a child and lacked proper materials and supplies. She would create her art using mud and charcoal on gates and fences. When they were forced to leave Hadrut during the 2020 war, they were unable to salvage their paintings. One of her paintings, which had been displayed in a hotel in the capital, was salvaged, while all her other works had to be left behind.
The artist couple are each other’s greatest critics and supporters. “I have received professional education and academically try to advise my husband, while he is stronger in compositions and helps me,” Amirjanyan told Hyperallergic.
As a mother of five, she has hardly created anything in recent years. “During the blockade, when you can’t find food to feed your children, it’s hard to think about painting,” she said, noting that even today, there are no conditions for painting. Despite this, last year she picked up the brush again.
Lalayan notes that living outside Artsakh means they must mentally “find themselves again.” Like most artists, selling their artwork poses another challenge.
“In Artsakh, everyone knew us, and we had places to showcase our work; here, those opportunities are gone,” he said.
Picking up his brush or chisel again after the war was difficult for Lalayan. He had not just lost his studio, art, home, and homeland, but also witnessed some of the most gruesome scenes of war. While his closest loss was the killing of his brother, Lalayan is even more traumatized by his experience seeing the severed body parts of his elderly neighbor, Vardan Altunyan.
Altunyan’s alleged beheading by Azerbaijani forces, according to Nagorno-Karabakh Human Rights Ombudsman Gegam Stepanyan and experts from organizations such as the Protection of Rights Without Borders NGO and the Center for Truth and Justice, is one of the many unreported human rights abuses of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. His brutal death was never recorded; instead, he was reported to have died by gunshot.
It is hard to even imagine what would have happened if the bodies of those with such a brutal fate had been buried in the same cemetery that the Azerbaijanis later destroyed in the village of Mets Tagher/Böyük Tağlar. The cemetery was founded in the early 19th century and was in use when Armenians evacuated the village in 2020. Satellite imagery shows its complete destruction, with visible signs of bulldozer scars — a fact confirmed by Caucasus Heritage Watch.
On January 10, an exhibition of paintings by Lalayan opened at the Narekatsi Art Union in Yerevan, marking the venue’s first showcase since the forced displacement. Arnold Meliksetyan, who also attended and supported his colleague and friend, noted that although he has not stopped creating, he feels the time is not yet ripe for him to hold an exhibition.
“My paintings are now new creations, inspired by my son Vem, born after the war,” said Lalayan. “Sometimes I want to recreate the paintings I left behind, but it’s impossible to recreate what you’ve lost.”
