Water Spell, Installation, video, 03:49 loop, 2025

During years of drought, women in various regions of Armenia used to perform a ritual in which they plowed the riverbed soil against the flow of water, dressed in men's clothing. This rain-invoking practice was common across the Caucasus. In her video, Mary Mikaelyan references this ritual alongside the custom of reading texts backward and playing with the names of political figures through wordplay. She reads a Soviet newspaper in reverse, evoking these traditions.

One of the Soviet government's central concerns in the region was the water and the irrigation of arid land. The article on the water problem and agriculture in Armenia calls for abandoning old superstitions, placing trust in engineering solutions instead, and proposes erasing the words “desert” and “drought” from the Armenian vocabulary.

The video performance is accompanied by drawings of dried leaves from various plants.