CYFEST 17

The Cafesjian Center for the Arts and CYFEST are pleased to announce the launch of the CYFEST 17 International Media Art Festival and the opening of the exhibition, Natura Naturans. Man, Nature, Landscape, on October 15, 2026, at 6:30 PM in the Center's Sasuntsi Davit Gallery.

CYFEST and Cafesjian Center for the Arts present Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape, featuring works by more than 35 international artists and bringing contemporary media art into dialogue with the legacy of the Organic School and its experiments with color, light, space, movement, and expanded perception. Across these different practices, the exhibition looks at how we perceive a world shaped by forces and processes that are both visible and beyond the reach of ordinary perception. Sunlight, magnetic fields, geological matter, biological form, cosmic radiation, and electromagnetic signals become ways of exploring how perception is shaped by technology and by the surrounding material world.

CYFEST 17 is honored to present Natura Naturans (Latin for “nature naturing”) at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts, where the exhibition enters into a meaningful dialogue with the architecture and spatial rhythm of the Cascade. Its relationship between interior and exterior, vertical movement, changing viewpoints, natural light, and the surrounding city closely reflects the exhibition’s interest in light, perception, material processes, and technological systems. In this context, the Cascade becomes more than a setting: it is integral to how Natura Naturans is experienced and understood.

The public program expands on the exhibition through performance, discussion, sound, and moving image. The opening night will feature a series of performances across the Cafesjian Center for the Arts.