Armenian genocide recalled in troubling group exhibition


Daily Star Monday, April 26, 2010

Review

Matern Boeselager

Special to The Daily Star

BOURJ HAMMOUD: “Art is the expression of a nation’s soul,” opined Hagop Havatian. The manager of the newly founded Hamazkayin Art Gallery in Bourj Hammoud, Havatian, was explaining what he sees to be the role of culture in the Armenians’ struggle to safeguard their identity in the diaspora.

In this regard, he has invited 28 artists, Armenian and non-Armenian, to contribute works inspired by the tragedy of the Armenian genocide. All of them answered his call.

The result of their collective efforts opened to the public on Thursday, two days before Armenians all over the world commemorated the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the massacres. The commemoration ceremonies are being held under the patronage of Aram I., Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia.

“It was important to invite non-Armenian artists to express their tribute to our martyrs,” Havatian said. “It was important because the genocide was committed against all of humanity, not just the Armenians.”

As a result, more than half of the artists on exhibition are Lebanese from other confessions. Indeed, some of these artists were not entirely familiar with the tragedy that befell the Armenians when they received the invitation.

“I knew a bit of the history, but I did my own research when I was invited,” said Zeina Badran, who submitted a small but thoughtful painting, using a silk-screen technique to replicate historical photographs on a white canvas. Due to the procedure and their small size, the details of the original pictures are hard to make out, turning the painting into an eerie vista of endless lines of blurred figures trudging through the canvas’ snowy plain.

Not all pieces on display are quite as reserved.

Naturally, combining 28 painters and sculptors within a single exhibition produces a great variety of work. Pieces of all sizes and styles hang next to each other, the figurative competing with the abstract, religious-inspired work vying with angry pop-art, the dramatic with the melancholic.

Yet for all their diversity in style, the works are united by their common subject. The desire to convey human suffering is present in every piece, although the approaches differ widely. While the dominant theme is an array of human bodies in various poses, some artists have attempted to go beyond the mere portrayal of misery.

In one painting by Charles Khoury, brightly colored figures are juxtaposed against a black background. The painter, who cites both primitive cave-paintings and street art as influences, explains that, although the black stands for all the hate and aggression mankind is capable of, the colors in the foreground indicated that hope is to be found even in the darkest hours.

In another corner of the room, Jean Marc Nahass has covered a large panoramic canvas with equally sized panels that show roughly charcoaled faces, soldiers, naked women and animals, calling to mind Picasso’s famous “Guernica” – albeit in the form of a comic strip.

The sculptures on display are equally diverse. The 90-year-old Armenian artist Guvder, who has also contributed three drawings to the show, covered a board with seven faces made of animal bone. Some of them smile at the observer in a rather unsettling manner.

Across the room, Tania Bakal Seifeddin has fashioned dozens of tiny cubes out of what look like stone, then wrapped them in colored plastic, sprinkled them with glitter and clustered them to form a miniature shantytown. She has called this “Camp Hadgin,” referring to one of the camps where Armenians first settled after arriving in Lebanon. Again, the colorful unruliness of the sculpture suggests that the piece might be read as a depiction of a refugee’s misery as well as a testimonial to life’s stubborn resolution.

Finally, tucked away in a corner at the far end of the gallery, the spectator will discover one of the most modest and yet most enigmatic of the pieces: Jamil Molaeb’s painting “New Genocide.” All there is to be seen are two dead birds on a sidewalk, delicately painted – all the more thought-provoking in contrast with some of the more-overbearing paintings in the piece’s immediate neighborhood.

While it sometimes feels that more than 30 works of art are a bit much for the space at the Hamazkayin Gallery, the pieces themselves do not fail to instill a feeling of unease at the many scenes of torture and despair. If art really is the expression of a nation’s soul, the scattered Armenian nation is still a tormented one.

“A Tribute to the Martyrs” is up at the Hamazkayin Gallery until May 3. For more info, call +961 3 290 968.

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