Artwork created using AI to be presented for the first time at National Gallery of Armenia

The “Index of Pressure” exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Sona Abgaryan, bringing together generative artificial intelligence, painting and sculpture, will open at the National Gallery of Armenia on November 15.

Organized as part of the nationwide “AI Days 2026” initiative, the exhibition aims to explore the interaction between technology and art, offering visitors an opportunity to gain a new perspective on the impact of artificial intelligence on human sensory experience.

The exhibition is the fourth project in the National Gallery of Armenia’s “Prospectations” program and the first artwork created using artificial intelligence to be presented at the gallery.

The “Index of Pressure” installation addresses one of the key questions of the modern world: will artificial intelligence expand human creative capabilities and perceptions of reality, or will it create new limitations?

Artist Sona Abgaryan said that, for her, the process of creating the artwork is important, but so is the viewer’s participation and the new relationship that develops through engagement with the artwork.

“We always look at things from the perspective of the artwork, but I think that in this case the viewer also plays a very important role. It is as if they enter a story, and a new type of relationship is created. I cannot say that it is very different from human relationships, because the entire foundation of artificial intelligence is also something created by humans. Moreover, artificiality is present to some extent in human relationships as well,” the artist said.

Abgaryan noted that while working with artificial intelligence, she often drew parallels with human relationships, discovering numerous similarities between them.

“For me, the purpose of this experience is not to answer questions, but to raise interesting ones. While working with artificial intelligence, I constantly drew parallels with human relationships. They are very similar, because the limitations of artificial intelligence remind me of the expectations we have in human relationships and how those expectations are not fulfilled. It is interesting to work within limitations and try to find new ways,” she emphasized.

The artist believes that one of the main challenges facing contemporary creators is presenting genuinely valuable and interesting work amid mass production and constant flows of information.

Tigran Tshorokhyan, Innovation and SDG Finance Portfolio Leader at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in turn emphasized that one of the exhibition’s main objectives is to present artificial intelligence not only from the perspective of logic and science, but also through sensory perception.

“We usually want to show that decisions in our lives are primarily made through reason. However, it is evident that the sensory world has just as much influence on our decisions as reason and judgment. Essentially, this is the first attempt to bring artificial intelligence, which is directly associated with the realm of reason, into the sensory realm as well — an area we engage with through art,” Tshorokhyan said.

According to him, bringing together art, science, consciousness and reason makes it possible to present the impact of artificial intelligence on various aspects of human life in a more comprehensive way.

Tshorokhyan said the exhibition is also an important experience for the National Gallery of Armenia, as it provides the public with an opportunity to see, for the first time, a work combining generative artificial intelligence and art.

Sona Abgaryan’s “Index of Pressure” installation features an AI-generated video, paintings and sculptures. The artist combines the visual languages of Hollywood cinema, Baroque painting, advertising photography and video games to create a surreal world in which familiar images are transformed into unexpected combinations. The exhibition is curated by Vigen Galstyan.

The exhibition is being held as part of the nationwide “AI Days 2026” initiative, organized by the United Nations Development Programme’s SDG Innovation Lab and the Ministry of High-Tech Industry and Artificial Intelligence of the Republic of Armenia.

It will run at the National Gallery of Armenia until November 29.