The Barber of Alexandria
Details: Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 inches
Year: 2025
A child peers through the doorway of a bustling 1950s barber shop in Alexandria, Egypt—except she was never really there. At the heart of this painting is a black-and-white photograph of my grandfather working in his barber shop in 1950s Alexandria, a temporary refuge for many displaced Armenians. Enlarging the image, I expanded its borders, adding myself as a little girl looking in, bridging past and present. The introduction of color infuses the scene with nostalgic reverence, reimagining a moment I never witnessed yet feel deeply connected to.
This painting explores intergenerational trauma, nostalgia, and cultural identity within the Armenian diaspora. As the daughter of immigrants and granddaughter of Armenian Genocide survivors, I have long navigated the tension between my birthplace, Quebec, and an ancestral homeland that no longer exists as it once did. My work transforms fragmented family histories into a vivid, enduring archive.
The painting speaks to the fragility of memory and the weight of lost histories. Oral narratives, often the only link to the past, shift over time, leaving me questioning what I know. Yet each detail affirms the resilience of those who endured displacement. This work is both an act of preservation and an attempt to heal intergenerational wounds, transforming grief into something lasting and deeply human. Through this painting, I invite viewers to reflect on their own ties to heritage, loss, and belonging, bridging the distance between what was lost and what remains.