Untitled (Bear Witness)
Details: Oil on Canvas, 30 x 72 inches
Year: 2024
This painting was inspired while reading Remnants by Elyse Semerdjian. My intentions for this painting revolve around creating a new type of classical painting. Like paintings found in churches of biblical scenes but from a gendered feminist perspective. Particularly reframing the sexual violence that is endured by women’s bodies by men trying to deliver messages to other men. Sexual violence, rape, and slavery, historically and even today, are weapons and tools of war. Using women’s bodies, and society’s patriarchal notions of shame that surround women’s sexuality to demean cultures and “enemy” communities. In my painting, I offer another perspective. I offer an unashamed view of this and beautifully portray this horror. If we take away the shame and victim blaming of our society the power of sexual violence can be weakened. My painting is a way to bear witness to sexual and gendered violence and to take away the stigma of it from the victim.
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.