Armenian artist Khoren Matevosyan (Xoromat) blends textile craft with digital worlds, reimagining folklore for a future still rooted in tradition.

Khoren Matevosyan Armenian textile artist, Emergence Series woven cloak with mythic figure and cosmic motifs, blending Armenian folklore with digital-inspired design. — **Khoren Matevosyan** | Armenian textile and digital artist Khoren Matevosyan blends folklore with futuristic imagination. His work spans woven art and immersive digital worlds — including the visuals for the game *The Bird of a Thousand Voices* by Tigran Hamasyan. *Courtesy by the artist.*

Weaving Myth into the Machine

Name: Chronicle of Motion
Start: 2025-09-30
Location: Woods Projects, Armenia

Some artists inherit traditions. Others hack them. Khoren Matevosyan known online as Xoromat - does both at once, fusing Armenian textile heritage with the logic of gaming and digital design.

Khoren Matevosyan digital artwork, Game World Scene from The Bird of a Thousand Voices for Tigran Hamasyan album, blending Armenian folklore with game-inspired mythic environment. Courtesy by the artist. — **Khoren Matevosyan,** **Game World Scene from The Bird of a Thousand Voices** | Part of the visual universe created for Tigran Hamasyan’s game *The Bird of a Thousand Voices*, this digital artwork by Matevosyan stages a mythic hero navigating temples, ruins, and cosmic symbols. Blending Armenian folklore with interactive aesthetics, it transforms myth into an immersive journey. *Courtesy by the artist.*

His work doesn’t just bridge the past and the present; it dissolves the border entirely, making folklore pixelate and code turn soft.

Between tapestry and screen, Matevosyan draws a map of futures rooted in memory.

From the woven cosmos of Emergence to the grayscale dreamscape of The Bird of a Thousand Voices, Matevosyan’s practice feels like stepping into a culture that is both ancient and yet to come.

The Bird of 1000 Voices, a game based on an Armenian folktale. Permission and courtesy of the Artist

This is the first Munchies Art Club feature on his work, ahead of our upcoming coverage of his public art intervention Chronicle of Motion at Woods Projects - Instagram, Armenia

Notable Works

The Bird of a Thousand Voices – Digital side-scroller game reimagining the Armenian folktale Hazaran Blbul, scored by Tigran Hamasyan. You can play the game here.
Emergence – Textile series in collaboration with Berq, turning fabric into a cosmic adventure map.
Emergence Website & Shop – A curated online portal merging physical and digital works into one continuous world.

Matevosyan textile The Creators of Stars with two floating figures exchanging radiant stars in a cosmic field, merging Armenian folklore with digital design. — **Khoren Matevosyan,** **The Creators of Stars** | The textile shows two floating figures exchanging radiant stars within a cosmic field. Blending Armenian folklore with digital-inspired patterning, the work transforms tapestry into a mythic constellation. *Courtesy by the artist.*

Tradition and Technology in Matevosyan’s Art: Folklore Rewoven for the Future

Matevosyan’s practice thrives on duality: handmade and coded, past and future, myth and machine.

His digital works carry the narrative depth of oral traditions, while his woven textiles operate like frozen game environments, complete with pixel logic and UI echoes.

Matevosyan EMERGENCE: Space and Adventure woven cloak with cosmic star field and multi-faced figures, merging Armenian folklore with digital-inspired textile design. — **Matevosyan,** **EMERGENCE: Space and Adventure** | The woven cloak transforms the body into a living canvas, patterned with cosmic stars and multi-faced figures. Blending Armenian folklore with digital cosmology, the work embodies myth as wearable tapestry. *Courtesy by the artist.*

By reinterpreting Armenian folklore through both fabric and screen, he shows how traditions evolve without losing their integrity.

His art asks for patience and attention, the same qualities that folklore has always demanded from its listeners.

**Khoren Matevosyan aka Xoromat** with EMERGENCE: Space and Adventure in collaboration with collaboration with Berq, a collection inspired by cosmic adventures and the endless pursuit of the unknown. Emergence tells the story of brave explorers traveling to mysterious planets, uncovering rare artifacts, and creating legends of new worlds. This collection feels like a living fantasy, capturing the essence of being a hero in a cosmic saga. It’s inspired by the spirit of adventure in uncharted space, where every discovery becomes part of a new legend.

Heritage and Technology in Dialogue: How Matevosyan Stands Apart in Media Art

In the global field of media artists merging heritage with technology, Matevosyan stands apart in his sincerity. Where others lean on irony or nostalgia, he embraces continuity.

Matevosyan The Unforgettable Feeling When You Find the Key to the Next Level textile artwork with symbolic animal, chained hands, checkered digital grid, Armenian folklore motifs, and game-inspired interface. — **Matevosyan,** **The Unforgettable Feeling When You Find the Key to the Next Level** | The textile stages a checkered digital space where a symbolic animal stands before chained hands and interface icons. The work fuses Armenian folklore with game-like environments, questioning control, myth, and technology. *Courtesy by the artist.*

His work recalls the narrative textiles of Anni Albers, the immersive world-building of indie game designers like Studio Ghibli’s Ni no Kuni team, and the visual storytelling depth of early isometric RPGs.

Yet every pixel and every stitch remains grounded in Armenian cultural language.

Khoren Matevosyan textile cube, Illustrations from the Fourth Book from Seven Army Sketchbooks (2018–2020), created during military service in Nagorno-Karabakh. Courtesy by the artist. — **Khoren Matevosyan,** **Illustrations from the Fourth Book** **(from the series** **Seven Army Sketchbooks****, 2018–2020)** | Created during his military service as a mortar operator on the northern border of Nagorno-Karabakh, Matevosyan’s sketchbooks became a lifeline amid alerts, sleepless nights, and harsh weather. Drawn in the mud, rain, and exhaustion, these pages blur reality and imagination, each line a door into another world, a way to endure and escape. *Courtesy by the artist.*

Form and Material: Weaving Digital Tapestries from Code, Cloth, and Sound

Emergence employs handweaving as a form of programming: crisp, geometric compositions that evoke maps of unknown planets.

Loose threads, softness, and human touch keep the work physical.

Matevosyan The Transformation of Thought into Matter – The MRMCA 4 Mechanism textile artwork depicting figure with VR headset, cosmic grids, Armenian heritage, and digital-inspired weaving — **Matevosyan,** **The Transformation of Thought into Matter – The MRMCA 4 Mechanism** | The textile shows a figure in virtual-reality gear mapping cosmic grids on woven fabric. Fusing Armenian heritage with digital exploration, the work transforms tapestry into a tool of futuristic storytelling. *Courtesy by the artist.*

The Bird of a Thousand Voices uses duotone animation and game mechanics as a kind of digital tapestry, each frame carrying the texture of an illuminated manuscript.
Sound, image, and interaction interlace like warp and weft.

Curatorial Voice: Expanding Armenian Tradition Through Digital Worlds and Tapestry

Matevosyan is a world-builder. His art doesn’t reconstruct the past; it expands it, carrying Armenian visual language into formats it has never occupied before.

Matevosyan woven cube with mirrored human figures, geometric motifs, Armenian folklore, and digital-inspired textile design, held in hands. — Matevosyan’s woven cube, held like a relic, depicts mirrored human figures carrying geometric forms. Blending Armenian folklore with digital pattern logic, the work transforms textile into both sculpture and code. *Courtesy by the artist.*

In his hands, tapestry can hold code, and a game can carry the weight of myth. This is work that insists tradition is not static, it’s alive, evolving, and still singing.

Khoren Matevosyan Emergence artwork, two figures holding black flags in a barren landscape, blending Armenian folklore, ritual, and performance. — Khoren Matevosyan, *Emergence*. *Courtesy by the artist.*

Written by Dominique Foertig, curator, editor, and co-founder of Munchies Art Club

Follow Khoren Matevosyan @xoromat and visit emergenceprojects.com to step into his woven and coded worlds. Stay tuned for our upcoming feature on his Chronicle of Motion at Woods Projects, Armenia.