About Us
What is Abastan?
Abastan is an international community of artists and volunteers coming together in the small town of Tumanyan amidst the mountains of Northern Armenia. Our mission is to nurture an inspiring and supportive environment where creativity can flourish and where participants can find what they need most, whether healing serenity or exchange of ideas and collaboration. Our practice is guided by low-waste, low-cost, and context-sensitive making, attentive to where we are, and where we are is always a meeting point of many worlds.
What Do We Do?
Learning and Creating Together
We organize hands-on workshops and courses where people of all ages learn to create with what is at hand. From crafting musical instruments and toys to designing useful everyday objects, participants explore practical skills while discovering new ways of thinking about materials, waste, and art. Abastan is also a gathering place for artists and makers who spend time with us while pursuing their own projects. There is always room for new people, spontaneous ideas, and surprising collaborations!
Nurturing a Community
Abastan is not a rigid institution but a community based on trust, friendship, and generosity. We work together and we have fun together. We create an environment of playfulness where everyone feels safe to try and fail, and where people from around the world can find solace in turbulent times.
Transforming Ordinary Spaces into Places of Creativity
We bring exhibitions, workshops, theater and music performances into homes, gardens, bus stops, and other everyday spaces, showing that creativity belongs everywhere and shouldn't be confined to formal cultural institutions.
Caring for the Environment
We practice low-waste living and encourage a deeper connection to the local environment. In our work, we draw on materials from our surroundings: we shape ceramics from local clay, make pigments from soils, stones, and plants, design paper with dried plants we collect. We cultivate gardens, encourage respect for local ecosystems, regularly take stray dogs for vaccination and medical treatment, and actively promote humane treatment of all animals. Two Abastan aritists have also been leading an initiative focused on recycling plastic and transforming it into artworks and design objects.
Placemaking Through Stories and Art
We gather oral histories, objects, and old ephemera that capture the past and present meanings of place. We turn to them in our creative projects, making the many layers of local history visible and nurturing a common sense of place.
Supporting Local Small-Scale Economy
We support local livelihoods, especially women running hospitality micro-businesses, by helping to attract visitors, buying dairy, produce, and honey directly from small-scale producers, inviting them to share their skills, and offering volunteer labor when help is needed.
Vision
Our goal is to grow Abastan into a lasting presence and a hub for creative and educational initiatives across the region, while continuing to support displaced and migrant artists. To ensure long-term sustainability, we are raising funds to establish Abastan House – a modest village home that will serve as our permanent base.
Having our own space will enable us to provide temporary accommodation for displaced artists, volunteers, and guests, and to host public workshops, including workshops for children, throughout the year. It will also strengthen our capacity to build intercultural networks of solidarity through exchange programs with like-minded residencies worldwide.
Our history
Abastan emerged in the summer of 2022 as an initiative to support artists who had left Russia in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, made possible with an emergency grant from the European Cultural Foundation. Accommodation and shared workspaces were provided in the building of a former school (later converted into a textile factory) in Tumanyan. The building, now privately owned, had stood unused for over thirty years. In exchange for accommodation, artists contributed volunteer labor to clean and repair the space. In that first phase, the project was propelled by an ambitious vision: to transform the emergency initiative into an institutionalized art residency. The name, inspired by the Armenian word for refuge, reflected the hope of creating a space for artists and cultural practitioners seeking respite from political upheaval and the pressures of urban life and art worlds. But as more than a hundred volunteers joined that first season, bringing extraordinary energy and imagination to the strenuous tasks of cleaning, repairing, salvaging, and remaking, it became clear that what was taking shape wasn’t a conventional institution. The process itself called for something more open and collaborative.
What emerged was a community project, co-curated by a very diverse group of people, including painters and photographers, filmmakers and animators, musicians, dancers, theater performers, textile artists and sculptors, historians, anthropologists, environmental activists, teachers, and many others. With this, the meaning of Abastan shifted, becoming less about a place and more about shared time, learning, and the energy of doing things together. Many who have spent time in Tumanyan once return many times again and remain involved from around the world. While the first cohort of Abastan was formed by migrants from Russia, we have since welcomed participants and guests from many other countries, including Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA, and the community is growing more diverse and international every year. After several Iranians joined Abastan in the wake of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, a connection with Iranian artists also became an integral part of our community’s life.
In September 2022, Abastan NGO was registered as a legal structure to support the community’s work. The project has remained independent and volunteer-run ever since. Between 2022 and 2024, Abastan continued to operate in the former school/factory building. Growing disagreements over governance, heritage, and art practices eventually brought the collaboration with the building’s owner to an end. Since 2024, we’ve taken a decentralized approach, bringing Abastan to several private houses in Tumanyan and hosting workshops and exhibitions in gardens, living rooms, garages, and even on the streets.
It wasn’t only the collective work that reshaped the project but also the place itself. Tumanyan has become a generous home, even as we remain newcomers here. Being “here” for us means engaging with its many layers – its landscape and built environment, its ancient past, its rise as a twentieth-century industrial center, and the long aftermath of deindustrialization, with all the difficulties and everyday forms of resilience it produced. Our approach to creativity and art has grown directly from the context of Tumanyan. A conventional art residency, with its predictable formats, high resource demands, and social exclusivity, would have created an incongruous and ethically fraught presence here. Instead, the constraints of the place have pushed us toward a more honest and situated creative practice. The place continuously challenges us to question our assumptions about what art should look like, where it should happen, and who it’s for, inspiring ways of working free from the commercial pressures and cultural hierarchies that dominate urban art scenes.
The activities of Abastan Community are supported by Abastan NGO, a non-governmental not-for-profit organization registered in Armenia in 2022.
Abastan is an international community of artists and volunteers coming together in the small town of Tumanyan amidst the mountains of Northern Armenia. Our mission is to nurture an inspiring and supportive environment where creativity can flourish and where participants can find what they need most, whether healing serenity or exchange of ideas and collaboration. Our practice is guided by low-waste, low-cost, and context-sensitive making, attentive to where we are, and where we are is always a meeting point of many worlds.
What Do We Do?
Learning and Creating Together
We organize hands-on workshops and courses where people of all ages learn to create with what is at hand. From crafting musical instruments and toys to designing useful everyday objects, participants explore practical skills while discovering new ways of thinking about materials, waste, and art. Abastan is also a gathering place for artists and makers who spend time with us while pursuing their own projects. There is always room for new people, spontaneous ideas, and surprising collaborations!
Nurturing a Community
Abastan is not a rigid institution but a community based on trust, friendship, and generosity. We work together and we have fun together. We create an environment of playfulness where everyone feels safe to try and fail, and where people from around the world can find solace in turbulent times.
Transforming Ordinary Spaces into Places of Creativity
We bring exhibitions, workshops, theater and music performances into homes, gardens, bus stops, and other everyday spaces, showing that creativity belongs everywhere and shouldn't be confined to formal cultural institutions.
Caring for the Environment
We practice low-waste living and encourage a deeper connection to the local environment. In our work, we draw on materials from our surroundings: we shape ceramics from local clay, make pigments from soils, stones, and plants, design paper with dried plants we collect. We cultivate gardens, encourage respect for local ecosystems, regularly take stray dogs for vaccination and medical treatment, and actively promote humane treatment of all animals. Two Abastan aritists have also been leading an initiative focused on recycling plastic and transforming it into artworks and design objects.
Placemaking Through Stories and Art
We gather oral histories, objects, and old ephemera that capture the past and present meanings of place. We turn to them in our creative projects, making the many layers of local history visible and nurturing a common sense of place.
Supporting Local Small-Scale Economy
We support local livelihoods, especially women running hospitality micro-businesses, by helping to attract visitors, buying dairy, produce, and honey directly from small-scale producers, inviting them to share their skills, and offering volunteer labor when help is needed.
Vision
Our goal is to grow Abastan into a lasting presence and a hub for creative and educational initiatives across the region, while continuing to support displaced and migrant artists. To ensure long-term sustainability, we are raising funds to establish Abastan House – a modest village home that will serve as our permanent base.
Having our own space will enable us to provide temporary accommodation for displaced artists, volunteers, and guests, and to host public workshops, including workshops for children, throughout the year. It will also strengthen our capacity to build intercultural networks of solidarity through exchange programs with like-minded residencies worldwide.
Our history
Abastan emerged in the summer of 2022 as an initiative to support artists who had left Russia in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, made possible with an emergency grant from the European Cultural Foundation. Accommodation and shared workspaces were provided in the building of a former school (later converted into a textile factory) in Tumanyan. The building, now privately owned, had stood unused for over thirty years. In exchange for accommodation, artists contributed volunteer labor to clean and repair the space. In that first phase, the project was propelled by an ambitious vision: to transform the emergency initiative into an institutionalized art residency. The name, inspired by the Armenian word for refuge, reflected the hope of creating a space for artists and cultural practitioners seeking respite from political upheaval and the pressures of urban life and art worlds. But as more than a hundred volunteers joined that first season, bringing extraordinary energy and imagination to the strenuous tasks of cleaning, repairing, salvaging, and remaking, it became clear that what was taking shape wasn’t a conventional institution. The process itself called for something more open and collaborative.
What emerged was a community project, co-curated by a very diverse group of people, including painters and photographers, filmmakers and animators, musicians, dancers, theater performers, textile artists and sculptors, historians, anthropologists, environmental activists, teachers, and many others. With this, the meaning of Abastan shifted, becoming less about a place and more about shared time, learning, and the energy of doing things together. Many who have spent time in Tumanyan once return many times again and remain involved from around the world. While the first cohort of Abastan was formed by migrants from Russia, we have since welcomed participants and guests from many other countries, including Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA, and the community is growing more diverse and international every year. After several Iranians joined Abastan in the wake of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, a connection with Iranian artists also became an integral part of our community’s life.
In September 2022, Abastan NGO was registered as a legal structure to support the community’s work. The project has remained independent and volunteer-run ever since. Between 2022 and 2024, Abastan continued to operate in the former school/factory building. Growing disagreements over governance, heritage, and art practices eventually brought the collaboration with the building’s owner to an end. Since 2024, we’ve taken a decentralized approach, bringing Abastan to several private houses in Tumanyan and hosting workshops and exhibitions in gardens, living rooms, garages, and even on the streets.
It wasn’t only the collective work that reshaped the project but also the place itself. Tumanyan has become a generous home, even as we remain newcomers here. Being “here” for us means engaging with its many layers – its landscape and built environment, its ancient past, its rise as a twentieth-century industrial center, and the long aftermath of deindustrialization, with all the difficulties and everyday forms of resilience it produced. Our approach to creativity and art has grown directly from the context of Tumanyan. A conventional art residency, with its predictable formats, high resource demands, and social exclusivity, would have created an incongruous and ethically fraught presence here. Instead, the constraints of the place have pushed us toward a more honest and situated creative practice. The place continuously challenges us to question our assumptions about what art should look like, where it should happen, and who it’s for, inspiring ways of working free from the commercial pressures and cultural hierarchies that dominate urban art scenes.
The activities of Abastan Community are supported by Abastan NGO, a non-governmental not-for-profit organization registered in Armenia in 2022.
