Hasmik Chakhmakhchyan

Lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia

Artist statement

My practice centers on painting as a way to construct fictional personalities and imagined social worlds. I am interested in identity, individuality, humor, and the ways a character can suggest a life beyond the limits of a single image. I work primarily with acrylic on canvas, using direct brushwork, heightened color, deliberate distortions of proportion, and strongly individualized figures. I am less interested in conventional portraiture than in the point where a painted face or body begins to acquire its own personality, history, and presence. My current project, Funky People Universe, is an expanding world populated by fictional characters, places, and encounters. Each character has an individual identity and backstory, while the paintings gradually connect to form a larger visual universe. Some works focus closely on a single figure; others introduce environments, fragments, or situations that suggest a broader narrative. Across the work, I use humor and exaggeration alongside psychological observation. I want the paintings to remain immediate and visually direct while leaving enough ambiguity for viewers to imagine who these people are and what kind of world they inhabit. The painted universe is also expanding into animation and music, with a series of animated musical films developed from its characters and visual world.

Artwork