ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBERED THROUGH ART
Gabriela Gonzalez
Daily Sundial, CA
California State University at Northridge
April 26 2006
Photo: Levon Parian, CSUN art instructor and student, is part of
a project to record the remembrances of survivors of the Armenian
Genocide.
A documentary exhibition of the film “i witness” which shows portraits
and oral stories of survivors from the Armenian Genocide from 1915
to 1923, is a photographic project directed to provide programs that
will show educators and teachers how to teach facts about the Armenian
Genocide in schools.
The exhibit is part of the Armenian Genocide Project, which was
designed to give the public an idea of what the genocide was like
and an idea about the lifestyles of many Armenians back then, said
CSUN art Professor Levon Parian, who worked in collaboration with
Ara Oshagan, a freelance photographer.
Oshagan started the project in 1995 after being inspired by a
commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, organized by 80 genocide
survivors who brought it to their community.
“I was very moved to see (the event),” Oshagan said. “There were the
last set of survivors. This is the time to take photos, I have to do
the project right now.”
Oshagan started the project first, and in 1996 he met Parian who also
had similar ideas. This was the beginning of the project when they
started to combine their ideas, Parian said.
There were other reasons to do this project, Parian said. He said
they wanted to record the survivors’ information for history because
the Turkish government keeps the Armenian genocide was genocide,
and said it was a war.
“We lost family members, we carried the memory of the genocide but
it still very much really (affects) our lives,” Oshagan said.
He felt needed to tell their story with art.
“Armenians never had their story told,” Oshagan said. “We realized
that there were witnesses (still able) to tell their history.”
They witnessed the genocide with their own eyes, Parian said.
Parian said he always wanted to use his photographic experience to
show that the Armenian Genocide did happen.
Organizing the project was Oshagan’s responsibility. Parian’s
responsibility was visual interpretation.
Oshagan said about 100 survivors have participated in the project
since 1995.
Parian said the witnesses had mixed reviews after seeing portraits
of themselves. The witnesses had hoped to look good but the photos
focused on the their faces and hands to show their aging and stress
they had gone through.
“The hands say as much about a person as a face,” Parian said. “The
identity of a person is revealed by their eyes and their hands. You
can tell a lot about a person by their hands, especially the gestures
of their hands.”
The Armenian Genocide was part of him, Parian said. He grew up
listening to family stories about how they had survived the genocide.
“My father lived in Urfa, a community in Armenia and he helped 4,000
Armenians to cross the desert to get away from the genocide,” Parian
said. “Then he went back and found orphans and brought hundreds to
orphanages to (what) at that time was Syria,”
Parian’s wife’s grandmother, Kristine Hagopian, was the only family
member who participated in the project.
Hagopian was 9 years old when she witnessed many atrocities: her
friend was raped by Turks after being raped in the bushes and later
shot in front of her. Maro Parian said her father was raped by Turk
soldiers in front of her and her family.
“For many years she would tell her story, (but) every time she would
come to a point where she would (have to) stop and not go any further,”
Maro Parian said.
Hagopian was happy with the genocide project, although it was hard
to tell her story. She was happy that the stories were not going to
be lost and their stories were going to be told, Maro Parian said. It
was a sense of satisfaction for Hagopian.
“She would see pictures and turned her face away” Maro said. “(She)
experienced her pain (all over again).”
“The stories are shocking,” Parian said, as he told of how Sam Kadorian
survived the genocide.
Kadorian survived by pretending he was dead when he was thrown on the
floor in a pile of death bodies of boys between the ages of five to 10.
As they began with the first exhibition in 1996, more witnesses kept
coming to the exhibitions, more survivors wanted to tell their stories,
Parian said.
The exhibition has been showed at UCLA, and a few parts have been
showed at CSUN.
But there is a possibility to exhibit the whole project at CSUN,
Parian said.
Some survivors had blocked out their memories about the genocide
while others spoke freely, he said.
“i witness” was first displayed to the public Los Angeles city hall in
1997 at the Del Rio Bridge Gallery. Since then, it has been exhibited
in major state capital buildings and museums and the Capitol building
in Washington, D.C.
The exhibition is on display for the second time in Los Angeles City
Hall. It is on display through the month of April in Los Angeles City
Hall as part of the Armenian Genocide Project.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
