About

Artistic Statement

A black-and-white photo of a family sitting in a baby stroller on the beach, with a man, a woman, and two children.

I am a visual artist working in oil painting, exploring the changeable nature of immigrant nostalgia through dreamlike imagery. As the granddaughter of four survivors of the Armenian genocide, and the daughter of immigrants, I draw from my family’s archives and stories to connect personal histories to broader questions of memory, displacement, and cultural disconnection.

Working from inherited photographs and oral narratives, I reimagine these images using bright, unexpected colour palettes. I introduce cultural symbols that may not appear in the original material but exist in an intangible way, embedded in memory and identity. Through shifts in scale, I emphasize the emotional weight of certain figures, objects, and moments, allowing their significance to expand beyond the literal scene.

My paintings move between careful rendering and areas left sketchy or unresolved. This tension reflects the instability of memory itself: how stories are altered, softened, or reshaped over time, often to serve what is carried forward to the next generation. In this way, the work resists the idea of memory as fixed or factual, and instead embraces its fluid and constructed nature.

Through this practice, I am less concerned with the accuracy of memory than with its emotional truth. Nostalgia, even when fragmented or reimagined, holds the power to connect, to preserve, and to bridge across cultures. Memory becomes a living force, one that transcends time and place, and continues to shape both personal and collective futures.

About Marie

Woman with long dark hair smiling at an art gallery, standing next to a colorful painting of a man with four children in front of a building.

Marie Khediguian is an Armenian-Canadian artist based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory). The granddaughter of four Armenian Genocide survivors, she explores memory, inherited trauma, and diasporic identity through layered oil paintings that reinterpret family photographs, oral histories, and archival fragments. Drawing on post-memory, folklore, and magical realism, her work bridges the intimate and the collective, transforming domestic spaces and everyday gestures into sites of rupture, resilience, and remembrance.

Marie holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture from McGill University and is currently completing a BFA in painting and drawing at Concordia University. She has exhibited in group shows, participated in residencies, and her work has been featured in publications. A member of an Armenian artist collective, she also leads talks and workshops on art, survival, and cultural memory. Her practice extends beyond the personal archive to question how communities preserve, reshape, and carry histories forward.

Portfolio

Let’s Connect

Thank you for spending time with my work. If you'd like to connect—for exhibitions, collaborations, speaking engagements, or just to start a conversation—I’d love to hear from you.

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