Mixed Media, 2024
Flesh, Immemorial
մարմին, հնագույն
A creative experiment in the undoing of absence and kaleidoscopic super(im)position of Western Armenians onto their home-landscapes of origin. These mixed-media monuments are radical interventions of place and land from which they descend but may not have access to.
About
Many felt the echoes of the Armenian Genocide since the war in Artsakh, with large portions of our homelands lost, countless buried and displaced. Accordingly, this project will creatively restore the relationships of indigenous Armenians with their ancestral landscapes. We will form a constellation of mixed media imprints that generate ancestral healing, diasporic futurism, and creative reclamation of land, belonging, and autonomy. In relationship with the project participants, we will generate these monuments by collaborating both aesthetically and by way of the ethereal – with the stories, spirits, flora and fauna of our homelands. This is especially poignant work for SWANA peoples, as we continue to survive displacement and live with intergenerational trauma.
Audiences will access Flesh Immemorial through a mixed media art exhibition, and a digital installation that experiments with gaming and rendering technologies.
Participants:
Ali Cat Chavez (Bitlis)
Emily Mkrtichian (Van)
Milena Abrahamyan (Lori)
Sara Abrams (Erzrum)
Satenig Mirzoyan (Palu)
Emma Basmadjian (Adana)
Patil Halajian (Marash)
Saana Araxi Abrahamian-Hoyt (Dikranagerd & Sis)
The mixed media collection includes elements from archival and current day landscapes, sites, and maps. The first participant of this project is Sara Abrams, whose great grandmother was from Erzerum. She was kidnapped as a child several times – and so her family, the Ketchabashians, fled their homeland in 1905 due to increasing threats. Echoes of this story ring too close to home today, through the current situation in Artsakh.
Follow Kamee Abrahamian on Instagram for updates and email them at lorikamee (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re interested in hosting this project.
Special thanks to the Gulbenkian Foundation for their generous support of this project.
