Welcome tatev's Zome Garden of Lateral Growth
I use media-making, archival practice, and community organizing as tools for studying how collective spaces survive, adapt, and generate meaning under conditions of precarity.
RHIZOME IS HOME
For the past eight years, I’ve been involved in the DIY arts haven Rhizome DC—creating weekly flyers, designing its logo, reviewing art proposals, and developing my own artistic practice within the space.
I directed an experimental documentary which captures the ecology of DIY communities & the ways they nurture expression and connection amid socio-economic pressures.
The film draws on over 150 GB of community-contributed performance footage and excerpts from oral history interviews I recorded and preserved in the DC Public Library People’s Archives, capturing both the stories and the physical traces embedded throughout the Rhizome house. I love recording local stories in public libraries <3
I proposed and co-organized an exhibition at the MLK Library Great Hall (Oct–Dec 2025), collaborating with local artists on D.I.Y. in the District,. I installed the section on current art spaces from the 2000s onward, featuring flyers, display with an excerpt from Rhizome is Home documentary, a synth painting by Peter Blasser with exposed wires, and city signs about permitting and construction..
I incorporated materials from earlier Rhizome installations and presented works by contemporary D.C. artists including Claire Alrich, Khalid Thompson, Janel Leppin, and Kanchan Blasé. I also curated the D.I.Y. in DC Festival (Oct 18–19), which activated the exhibition with panels, workshops, music, gongs, movement, and other community-led programming.
DIY IN THE DISTRICT
My two-year collaboration with artists, organizers, and curators across D.C., celebrating the city’s artist-run spaces from the 1970s to now.
Katea Sitt, WPFW (Jazz and Justice Station) Program Director at the D.I.Y in D.C. Festival at MLK Memorial Library, 10/2025
Ensemble of Volcanic Ash at the D.I.Y in D.C. Festival at MLK Memorial Library, 10/2025
I volunteer at Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Highland Park, part of the LA City Garden Council network. I garden with my mom and support daily operations, community engagement, and long-term planning, while also participating in Council meetings and helping design intergenerational programs for marginalized communities.
I secured grants from the City and neighborhood Councils to retile the garden kitchen floor with historic tiles and to restore garden beds in early 2026. I work with garden members, volunteers, LA City Garden Council on city-wide community garden initiatives. I'm co-hosting the 2026 LA City Garden Leader Retreat, focusing on how community gardens are sanctuaries and what that means for our immigrant and marginalized communities today.
I’m also developing a living archive of 16 years of garden media to preserve and share the history of Milagro Allegro garden amidst the larger LA community garden story of resilience in our precarious times.
Art & Animation
A narrative study exploring rare horizon-level images from the Moon, Mars, Titan, Venus, and the asteroid Ryugu. I developed the concept, wrote the story, and animated the piece to transform scientific landing data into an evocative, interpretive experience.
Created in collaboration with NASA aerospace engineer Ben Ashman (science and story advising) and Sam Chintha, whose soundscape Seals in Space shapes the project’s atmosphere. The short film along with an accompanying lecture on space navigation was streamed as part of Stoned Science series, an informal science-and-art gathering.
Imagery: NASA · USSR Academy of Sciences · JAXA/Hayabusa2
