Los Angeles County Mayor Michael D. Antonovich &
The Lucie Foundation present
An Official MOPLA exhibit
iwitness: Public Art Installation
Artists: Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian
Architect: Vahagn Thomasian
April 25 – May 31, 2015
At The Music Center & Grand Park
200 N. Grand Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012 // (213) 972-8080
Open daily from 5:30 am to 10 pm
Opening Saturday, April 25th from 5-8 pm
Supported by the Chitjian Foundation
A project by The Genocide Project
iwitness is a large-scale public art installation by artists Ara
Oshagan and Levon Parian and architect Vahagn Thomasian on three
levels at the Music Center and Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.
Sponsored by Los Angeles County Mayor Michael D. Antonovich and the
Lucie Foundation, iwitness will be the first ever public art
installation at Grand Park. The installation is also a featured
exhibit of the Lucie Foundation’s Month of Photography in Los Angeles
photo festival ().
iwitness installation consists of an inter-connected network of
towering asymmetrical photographic sculptures wrapped with massive
portraits of eyewitness survivors of the Armenian Genocide of
1915. The sculptures have no right angles and their irregular angular
shapes speak to an unbalanced world, continually at risk of war,
ethnic cleansing and genocide=80’crimes against humanity that the
Genocide survivors have witnessed with their own eyes. They range in
height from eight to fifteen feet and at night are illuminated from
the inside, like lanterns.
iwitness is a temporary memorial to the Armenian Genocide centennial
commemorated this April by Armenians worldwide. The first genocide of
the 20^th century was a blueprint for the numerous genocides that
followed, from the Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda to Bosnia, Darfur,
and Syria today. The effects of the brutal trauma as well as Turkey’s
continued denial of the facts are still felt today, 100 years and many
generations later.
The installation pays homage to these resilient, courageous and
industrious men and women who, against all odds, survived the Turkish
government’s systematic attempt to annihilate them. Most all survivors
in the series are Los Angeles area residents who fled the destruction
in their homeland to re-establish new lives in the U.S. and in a
vibrant global diaspora. They include:
* Emmy-nominated filmmaker Michael J. Hagopian of Thousand Oaks, who
survived because his mother hid him in a mulberry bush.
* Hampartsoum Chitjian of Los Angeles, who was saved by a blind
Kurdish man.
* Hayastan Terzian of Pasadena, whose family was saved by the
U.S. Consul Leslie Davis stationed near her hometown.
* Sam Kadorian of Van Nuys, who was left for dead under a pile of
decomposing bodies and survived on his wits, courage and will to
live.
Each of these survivors implore us to hold perpetrators of genocide
and mass atrocity accountable, no matter where it occurs and against
whom, and to take a strong stand for worldwide peace and tolerance.
Major funding from the Hampartzoum & Ovsanna Chitjian Foundation
Copyright © 2015 Ara Oshagan Photography, All rights reserved.