Artistic Statement

I am an Armenian-Canadian artist based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory), and the granddaughter of four Armenian Genocide survivors. My work explores post-memory—a second-generation connection to trauma carried through inherited stories, silences, and imagination. Grounded in oil painting, I use layered glazes to mirror the fragmented nature of memory, where history and interpretation blur.

Through the reinterpretation of old family photographs, I adjust color, symbolism, and form to create dreamlike spaces where absence and presence coexist. These images are not reconstructions, but reimaginings—infused with elements of magical realism and shaped by the ache of displacement.

My work asks: What is the truth when it comes to family history? And does it matter? As a diasporic Armenian whose family was forcibly removed from its indigenous lands, I live in the tension between longing for a place I’ve never known and holding onto culture through memory—especially now that both of my parents have passed away. These paintings become a way of archiving, of keeping the past alive while shaping how it carries forward.

In parallel with these personal histories, I draw inspiration from Armenian folklore and oral traditions—narratives that evolve with time, told and retold in response to shifting cultural needs. I bring these stories into the present, reinterpreting ancestral motifs through a contemporary lens to explore questions of belonging, resilience, and cultural continuity.

My work is both a mourning ritual and an act of resistance. It transforms grief into visual storytelling and affirms the power of diasporic memory to preserve, adapt, and survive.