Each of Nina Khemchyan’s sculptures invites silent meditation. Through essential forms and universal motifs, she engages the viewer to feel both matter and time.
Since 2000, Nina has been shaping spheres clay, on which, by incising the raw surface, she engraves feminine and masculine figures, seemingly of the present, who see themselves deified and busy with the pleasure of blossoming as they undulate. While the faces appear contemporary, the temporality recalling Jean Cocteau's drawings, the artist projects them into places where joy triumphs and innocent nudity refers to a forgotten land: the kingdom of Venus.
To these genre scenes, which evoke a form of Baudelairean plenitude, where all is "luxury, calm and pleasure", is added a decorative dimension that explores geometry, a primitive, almost parietal "cutting" of the support. The movement of the intertwining hairs follows a rhythm that is that of the sphere at the moment when the artist imagines this happy deployment, often tinged with humor and mischief that refers to the personality of the artist herself. The polychromatic effect of flat tints of metal oxides lends an almost spatial character to the finished object, situating each scene at the intersection of the real, the present and the unreal, both sensitive and memorial.
Her world is often perceived as Mediterranean, probably linked to Armenia's rich heritage and natural environment, but also rooted in more ancient cultures, such as that of Greek antiquity.