Anna Hakobyan Issues a Statement

Anna Hakobyan has addressed the uproar and criticisms surrounding Levon Tokmajyan's statue of Paruyr Sevak in a post on her social media page, sharing several internationally renowned artworks and writing:

“The photographs feature works by globally recognized artists. Some are self-portraits, where they are almost unrecognizable or appear extremely ugly and misshapen, while others are sculptures and compositions. One is titled 'Family,' another 'The Walker,' the third 'Man in Motion,' the fourth 'The King and Queen,' and so on. All are ugly, misshapen, and incomprehensible. None can be identified with objects accessible to our non-artistic eyes. When we think of a person, we envision someone with a familiar physical structure; the sculptor sees and creates a vague long object. Thinking of Pablo Picasso conjures an image of someone like us; he imagines something between a person and a gorilla. Why? Because he is not creating his own face at that moment but rather 'an encounter with death.' Therefore, Levon Tokmajyan sculpted not the face of Paruyr Sevak but 'The Silent Bell Tower' poem, as he perceives it, and in a way that we do not see it. That is why Levon Tokmajyan is the sculptor, and we are all engaged in our own work, and, it seems, we don’t understand much about art, painting, and sculptures. If we did, we would also understand the secret of the worldwide acclaim of the artworks listed below. But all these are, in our eyes, ugly, misshapen, and incomprehensible things, none of which bear resemblance to a person, nor do they resemble humans in general.”

It is worth noting that the statue was a gift from the sculptor to the school in the village of Zangakatun. Since its unveiling, it has been at the center of widespread criticism, and a decision has been made to remove the statue.