Hrag Vartanian

People often ask me about my writing, but they’re unsure how to approach it. Writers are often measured in books but I’ve avoided books for the most part, since I don’t feel they represent the type of writing I want to be doing at the moment. In fact, my first “book,” or object that will resemble a traditional book, will appear later this year as part of my Fixed Point Perspective project, and it will be published by Minerva Projects in Denver.

I decided to compile a list of some of my favorite essays, interviews, articles, reviews, and op-eds, all of which give you a good idea of my literary interests, talents, and ambitions. I hope this is helpful to those who have only recently discovered my work or are still unfamiliar with the breadth of my writing.

The list favors recent publications, but I’ve included some older pieces for fun.

Essays

1. “A Garden of Possibilities at the Palestinian Museum,” Hyperallergic (September 6, 2017)
2. “Imagining the Future Before Us: Forward to Sharon Louden’s The Artist as Culture Producer,” published on the Walker Blog (March 17, 2017)
3. “We Need to Start Now: A Personal Case for the Art Strike,” Hyperallergic (January 17, 2017)
4. “A Photograph That Is Between Listening and Looking,” introduction to Unsanctioned: The Art of New York Streets, compiled by Katherine ‘Luna Park’ Lorimer (London: Carpet Bombing Culture, 2016)
5. “Funny If You Think About It: Mathieu Lefèvre Laughing/C’est drôle quand on y pense : le rire de Mathieu Lefèvre,” part of special section dedicated to artist Mathieu Lefèvre in Espace #113 (Printemps-été/Spring-Summer 2016)
6. “Raqs Media Collective,” essay in Performa 13: Staging Ideas, edited by RoseLee Goldberg (New York: DAP, 2015)
7. “You Can’t Sit With Us at Art Basel Miami Beach,” Hyperallergic (December 3, 2014)
8. “Guarding Jeff Koons,” Hyperallergic (October 15, 2014)
9. “Four Questions About Contemporary Arab Art,” Hyperallergic (September 28, 2014)
10. “Break up the major museums to save them,” Al Jazeera America (August 31, 2014)
11. “The Real Life Politics of Palestinian Art in New York,” Hyperallergic (July 25, 2014)
12. Holy Holy Copy Copy Culture Culture” chapter in Double, ed. Serkan Özkaya (Princeton, October 2013), also published online
13. “An Experiment in Street Art Criticism,” Hyperallergic (March 11, 2010)
14. “Is Contemporary Architecture a PR Panacea for Autocrats? Western Architectural Ethics & Undemocratic Nations,“ Brooklyn Rail (September 2008)
15. “Peter Sourian,” from Forgotten Bread: First Generation Armenian-American Writers, edited by David Kherdian (Berkeley, CA: Heyday books, 2007)
16. “Curating on the Margin” (written with Yasmeen Siddiqui), Brooklyn Rail (Dec 2003)

Reporting

1. “Artist Alleges Raghubir Singh Assaulted Her, Stages #MeToo Performance at His Retrospective,” Hyperallergic (December 4, 2017)
2. “A Report from Standing Rock, Where Artists Listen, Learn, Inspire, and Heal,” [20:36] Hyperallergic Podcast (November 29, 2016), part of a three-part series (part 2 [33:14], part 3 [65:38]).
3. “Why Were So Many Women Excluded from the History of Abstract Expressionism?” Hyperallergic Podcast (July 25, 2016)
4. “Protest Action Erupts Inside Guggenheim Museum,” Hyperallergic (February 23, 2014)
5. Banksy New York Residency series, Hyperallergic (October 1–31, 2013)

Reviews

1. “The Elusive Index of Relationships Between Everyone,” Hyperallergic (June 15, 2018)
2. “Rituals of Liberation Intended to Unsettle at the Whitney Museum,” Hyperallergic (June 14, 2018)
3. “Adrian Paci Shows Us How We Mourn the Death of Dictators,” Hyperallergic (October 12, 2017)
4. “The Violence of the 2017 Whitney Biennial,” Hyperallergic (March 20, 2017)
5. “A Decorative Cosmology Bridging Heaven and Earth,” Hyperallergic (February 8, 2017)
6. “Why I Don’t Buy the Premise of Christoph Büchel’s Icelandic Mosque Pavilion,” Hyperallergic (May 22, 2015)
7. “The Yayoi Kusama Experience at David Zwirner in Emoji,” Hyperallergic (December 13, 2014)
8. “The Violent History of Kent Monkman,” Hyperallergic (June 14, 2014)

Artist Books

1. Concrete to Data zine project for exhibition at Steinberg Museum of Art at Long Island University in Brookville, New York (2015, print version and PDF released 2017)

Then there are a few pieces I’ve yet to publish but I wanted to include on this list — as bonuses — since they were performed or read in public.

Unpublished

1. My written contribution made while performing in Rob Andrews’s “Clean Hrag” (2011) performance (October 29, 2011) as part of Bushwick Beat night, unpublished
2. “My Small Tiny Gay Armenian Canadian Wedding,” read at “An Evening of Literary Pride” on June 20, 2009, jointly presented by Gartal and AGLA NY