Bear Witness
Oil On Canvas, 30 x 72 inches, 2024.
A sacred vision reimagined—where beauty bears the weight of truth and silence is broken.
Bear Witness reimagines the structure and grandeur of classical sacred painting to illuminate a deliberately silenced truth: the use of women’s bodies as tools of war. Inspired while reading Remnants by Elyse Semerdjian, this work confronts the historic and ongoing weaponization of sexual violence, especially the way patriarchal systems use shame and control to send violent messages through the bodies of women.
Where sacred paintings once portrayed male martyrdom and biblical sacrifice, I offer a feminist counter-image—one that refuses silence or shame. Here, horror is not hidden but rendered beautifully, unashamedly. It is a deliberate gesture to remove the stigma placed on victims, to dismantle the social structures that allow gendered violence to persist.
As a daughter of immigrants and granddaughter of Armenian Genocide survivors, I carry the weight of fractured histories. This painting reflects my lived experience in the Armenian diaspora—marked by nostalgia, loss, and the need to preserve what feels irretrievably gone. Oral histories, often mutable and incomplete, are the only threads that link me to a homeland altered by violence. In Bear Witness, I transform that grief into something lasting, tender, and unflinching.
This work is not only a commemoration—it is an intervention. A bearing of witness. A demand to see. And an offering to those whose voices have been denied, yet endure.
Exhibitions that featured Bear Witness:
October 2024
VAV Gallery, Montreal, Qc
A group exhibition exploring themes of dislocation, identity, and memory. Featuring works by seven artists, including three pieces by Marie Khediguian (Anchored in Time, Alexandria, Egypt, 1950s, andBearing Witness), the show examined displacement as both isolating and transformative. Curated by Emitees Tajdari, the exhibition invited reflections on survival, heritage, and belonging. An artist talk led by India-Lynn, as part of the IUNGO Talks program, deepened the dialogue on personal and collective narratives.