How-to Manual: A Monthly Salary manual dives into the everyday life of a person living and working in Armenia, but instead of offering practical solutions or instructions, it highlights the struggle to simply get by. In the traditional sense, a manual is a guidebook, designed to help people navigate tasks or situations with ease. But here, it’s the opposite. This manual doesn’t provide easy answers or shortcuts. Instead, it reveals the absurdity and difficulty of daily life showing how, despite the instructions, survival in this context remains a challenge. Each page illustrates a day-by-day account, making it clear that there’s no simple way out, no real sense of control. It captures the sense of frustration and humor in navigating a system that doesn't seem to work for the individual. In Armenia, where artists, once supported by the state, now have to enter the job market to earn a living, the manual points to the absurdity of trying to balance art with financial survival. By laying out the mundane details, it shows how life itself becomes an absurd series of instructions that don’t lead to any clear solutions. Instead of clarity, it presents a picture of how people are stuck in a loop of trying to make it, day after day, with no end in sight. It’s not about making life easier, but about showing how strange and difficult it has become.

Medium: paper / plastiglas Dimensions: 1.5 x 21m Date: 2011 / 2024