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Traces of three Armenian families in Depo show
By Rumeysa Kiger
Jan. 31, 2015
For the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Depo culture and
arts center is putting on several exhibitions about families who were
forced to leave their homes and properties or killed in various cities
in Anatolia.
The first of these shows "Armenian Family Stories and Lost
Landscapes," featuring a photography and research project by Helen
Sheehan about three families who are currently living in diaspora, is
currently on view in the Tophane neighborhood of Istanbul.
Irish artist Sheehan became interested in the subject while she was a
teacher at the Mechitarist Seminary School on the Armenian Island of
St. Lazzaro in Venice in the 1990s. In 2009, she decided to do
research on Armenians in diaspora in Paris and London where she was
able to find members of these families. The ancestors of the people
she found were from the eastern Anatolian city of Diyarbakir, known to
them as Digranagerd, and from Marash, Zeytun and Van region.
For the exhibition she took a series of photographs taken in the
properties of these people, sometimes projecting their old photos onto
the wall of a dilapidated house, or with the daily objects of family
members such as a scarf or a pocket watch.
Asena Gunal, program coordinator at Depo, explains in an interview
with Sunday's Zaman that they are aiming at putting on shows exposing
the lost past of the Armenian people. "Rather than documents showing
numbers or facts, we are trying to exhibit human stories and we
believe this is more effective. In our previous exhibitions on the
same topic, it was clearly seen that once these people were living
here together with us and we were next to each other in cultural and
social spheres, they contributed a lot to the cultural heritage of the
area.
"We will continue to do so. This year is very important because it
marks the 100th anniversary of the genocide and it has a symbolic
meaning. So we will be showcasing a number of shows both from Armenian
artists living in diaspora and also artists from Turkey who are
interested in the topic," she explains.
Regarding the current exhibition, Gunal says the photographer is
attempting to bring their past back to places she calls lost
landscapes. "She is kind of reviving these families in the lands from
where they were forced to move," she notes.
In his article in the show's catalogue, Dickran Kouymijan writes that
this research is about memory, lost landscapes and the destruction of
the concept of home, themes underlining this exhibition. "In one
passage while Marianna [Patricia] is looking at an album of old
photographs she sees one of her mother as a young, elegant woman in
Beirut. She exclaims, 'I would have been just like her, surrounded by
admirers at parties, dancing to Arabic music so beautifully that
everyone stops and stares. I stare. It is how things should have
been.'
"But as we see in Helen Sheehan's pictures, no matter how hauntingly
beautiful they are, things are not like they should have been. The
dilemma is how to live with that reality: the destroyed concept of
home or homeland, the haunted mind of memory? Or as Patricia Sarrafian
Ward has one of Marianna's relatives say, 'The past will never be
undone'," he writes.
"Sheehan's photographs and her profound texts on exile and
extermination, on Genocide and its negation, her determination through
art to allow the Armenians to inhabit again their homes, tries and for
most succeeds in creating optimal conditions to re-imagine a past that
in many respects has in fact been resurrected, at least in Diyarbakir,
renewed like the Church of St. Giragos has been restored," Kouymijan
writes, adding that Diyarbakir is full of people searching for a new
identity, and though it is not the one his own ancestors knew, it is,
nevertheless, Armenian.
"Armenian Family Stories and Lost Landscapes" will run through Feb. 8
at Depo in Tophane. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net
By Rumeysa Kiger
Jan. 31, 2015
For the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Depo culture and
arts center is putting on several exhibitions about families who were
forced to leave their homes and properties or killed in various cities
in Anatolia.
The first of these shows "Armenian Family Stories and Lost
Landscapes," featuring a photography and research project by Helen
Sheehan about three families who are currently living in diaspora, is
currently on view in the Tophane neighborhood of Istanbul.
Irish artist Sheehan became interested in the subject while she was a
teacher at the Mechitarist Seminary School on the Armenian Island of
St. Lazzaro in Venice in the 1990s. In 2009, she decided to do
research on Armenians in diaspora in Paris and London where she was
able to find members of these families. The ancestors of the people
she found were from the eastern Anatolian city of Diyarbakir, known to
them as Digranagerd, and from Marash, Zeytun and Van region.
For the exhibition she took a series of photographs taken in the
properties of these people, sometimes projecting their old photos onto
the wall of a dilapidated house, or with the daily objects of family
members such as a scarf or a pocket watch.
Asena Gunal, program coordinator at Depo, explains in an interview
with Sunday's Zaman that they are aiming at putting on shows exposing
the lost past of the Armenian people. "Rather than documents showing
numbers or facts, we are trying to exhibit human stories and we
believe this is more effective. In our previous exhibitions on the
same topic, it was clearly seen that once these people were living
here together with us and we were next to each other in cultural and
social spheres, they contributed a lot to the cultural heritage of the
area.
"We will continue to do so. This year is very important because it
marks the 100th anniversary of the genocide and it has a symbolic
meaning. So we will be showcasing a number of shows both from Armenian
artists living in diaspora and also artists from Turkey who are
interested in the topic," she explains.
Regarding the current exhibition, Gunal says the photographer is
attempting to bring their past back to places she calls lost
landscapes. "She is kind of reviving these families in the lands from
where they were forced to move," she notes.
In his article in the show's catalogue, Dickran Kouymijan writes that
this research is about memory, lost landscapes and the destruction of
the concept of home, themes underlining this exhibition. "In one
passage while Marianna [Patricia] is looking at an album of old
photographs she sees one of her mother as a young, elegant woman in
Beirut. She exclaims, 'I would have been just like her, surrounded by
admirers at parties, dancing to Arabic music so beautifully that
everyone stops and stares. I stare. It is how things should have
been.'
"But as we see in Helen Sheehan's pictures, no matter how hauntingly
beautiful they are, things are not like they should have been. The
dilemma is how to live with that reality: the destroyed concept of
home or homeland, the haunted mind of memory? Or as Patricia Sarrafian
Ward has one of Marianna's relatives say, 'The past will never be
undone'," he writes.
"Sheehan's photographs and her profound texts on exile and
extermination, on Genocide and its negation, her determination through
art to allow the Armenians to inhabit again their homes, tries and for
most succeeds in creating optimal conditions to re-imagine a past that
in many respects has in fact been resurrected, at least in Diyarbakir,
renewed like the Church of St. Giragos has been restored," Kouymijan
writes, adding that Diyarbakir is full of people searching for a new
identity, and though it is not the one his own ancestors knew, it is,
nevertheless, Armenian.
"Armenian Family Stories and Lost Landscapes" will run through Feb. 8
at Depo in Tophane. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net