Nina Katchadourian

Armenia in Venice: The past and the furious By Gareth Harris

May 1, 2015

One of several politically charged biennale displays this year, the country’s pavilion explores its violent history

For the Damascus-born artist Hrair Sarkissian, the issue of the Armenian genocide of 1915 always dominated family discussions. “For as long as I can remember, the massacre influenced almost everything we did,” he says.

According to the Armenian government, more than 1.5m of its citizens were killed when they were deported by Ottoman forces from eastern Anatolia to the Syrian Desert in 1915 — the centenary was marked on April 24 of this year. Turkey has never accepted the term “genocide”, but it acknowledges that vast numbers of Christian Armenians died in conflict with Ottoman soldiers during the first world war, when Armenia was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

Sarkissian’s grandparents were among the deportees and this bleak, and bloody, heritage underpins his practice. Now based in London, he is one of 18 established and emerging artists from the Armenian diaspora featured in the exhibition Armenity at this year’s Venice Biennale.

The exhibition’s location is far removed from the frenzied main show venues, in the Mekhitarist monastery on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni. There could hardly be a better backdrop for the Armenian narrative. In about 1715, Mekhitar, an Armenian monk, retreated to the island when under attack from the Ottoman army in southern Greece, and built there a complex for 17 monks. The Mekhitarist order thrived in this Venetian idyll, setting up a printing press and a library which today houses more than 4,000 medieval Armenian manuscripts.

Sarkissian’s 2012 photographic series “Unexposed” focuses on the descendants of Armenian nationals forced to convert to Islam under the Ottomans. Even today, for fear of Islamic authorities, he says that having rediscovered their roots and reconverted to Christianity “these descendants conceal their newfound Armenian-ness”.

Aram Jibilian's 'Gorky, a life in 3 acts (birth)' (2008)

Disguising one’s nationality is at the root of another work, Aram Jibilian’s photographic series “Akh Gorky” (2010). Jibilian created masks based on Arshile Gorky’s portrait “The Artist and His Mother” (1926-1936), which were worn by himself, his friends and family.

“This act of masking and reinventing continues to exist in contemporary Armenian- American traditions that I witnessed growing up in California, from concealing one’s inner desires out of fear of rejection to adopting an Americanised pronunciation of an ethnic name,” says Jibilian.

Meanwhile, Thessaloniki-born Aikaterini Gegisian will unveil 65 collages under the title “A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas” (2015), made from found images, some of them tourist paraphernalia. These assemblages explore romanticised visions of life in Soviet Armenia, Turkey and Greece during the 1970s and 1980s. “I’m exploring how new national identities are shaped by photographic images,” she says.

Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg, a Swiss citizen of Armenian origin and founder of the non-governmental agency Art for the World, was asked by the Armenian culture ministry to curate the exhibition. The quality of the work is her main priority, she says. “In the last hundred years, despite the Medz Yeghern — an expression that Armenians use to denote the period of massacres and deportations that peaked in 1915 — Armenian culture has survived, and artists of Armenian origin have remained genuine citizens of the world,” she writes in a statement posted online.

In the last hundred years, Armenian culture has survived — its artists are citizens of the world

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One highly controversial move is the inclusion of the Turkish-Armenian artist Sarkis under the Armenian umbrella. Sarkis is simultaneously Turkey’s official representative at the biennale this year, creating his “Respiro” installation in the Arsenale under the auspices of the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs. The directorate of press, which represents the Turkish government, declined to comment.

Nevertheless, Sarkis will show four works in the Armenian pavilion, including “Danseuse dorée en haut du toit” (2012), and “Atlas de Mammuthus Intermedius” (2014). “It is very important for me to keep the dialogue open. We are the link between two pavilions,” Sarkis says.

Aikaterini Gegisian's 'A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas' (2015)

The issue remains a highly contentious one between the two countries. Last month, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the Turkish government to recognise the mass killings as genocide. The move prompted the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, to tell reporters in Ankara that “this issue is now beyond the Turkish-Armenian issue. It’s a new reflection of the racism in Europe”.

Should these issues be aired at an art exhibition? “I think the concept is a very creative one that ably captures the manner in which the Armenians have been scattered throughout the world as a consequence of the collective violence they faced in the Ottoman Empire,” says Fatma Göçek, professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and author of A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire.

Von Fürstenberg, meanwhile, says that the experience has made her reconsider her own life experiences. “I escaped to the arts,” she says. “Perhaps it’s time for me to reassess everything.” armenity.net

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