To Armenia from Australia via Edmonton: Isolation prompts painter
Lara Chauvin to explore her ancestral roots
Edmonton Journal (Alberta) Canada
July 16, 2006 Sunday
Final Edition
by Gilbert A. Bouchard, Special to The Journal
EDMONTON – Australian-born painter Lara Chauvin had to move to Edmonton
to artistically get back in touch with her Armenian cultural roots.
"When I lived in Sydney, I was part of this large Armenian community
and was surrounded by the language and the culture, which I took for
granted," says the 29-year-old artist. "In fact, in my teen years I
went through a phase where I rebelled and rejected my ancestral roots."
That all changed in the spring of 2003. Having met and married a
Canadian of non-Armenian origins while still in Australia, the newly
minted couple moved to Edmonton for his work.
Once in Alberta’s capital, Chauvin found herself in a city that
had virtually no Armenian community compared to the expat Armenian
presence in Australia.
"There were 40,000 Armenians in Sydney, but maybe only 200 or so
here. All of a sudden I found myself in a city where I was getting
together with other people of Armenian descent only very rarely and
felt even more displaced.
"I started thinking more deeply about what my Armenian roots meant
and started painting images of Armenian women from various cultural
settings around the world," she says. "You might say that I’m painting
the push-pull of an identity crisis."
Chauvin has a debut showing of paintings at the Lando Gallery, 11130
105th Ave., as part of the It’s Summer group until July 30.
Chauvin’s figures are proudly non-photo-
realistic, painted with diverse media and boast postmodern touches like
subtle deployment of Armenian text in the paintings’ backgrounds. Her
training as a fashion designer at the Australian White House Institute
of Design in Sydney is also more than evident in her obvious love of
fabric and model-like poses in her colourful images.
Q: How did you come about with the images and compositions we see in
this show?
I’ve travelled extensively in the Middle East and Europe and found so
many other women of Armenian descent who were fascinated with my story
and the fact that I was raised in Australia. That’s what started me
noticing how different Armenians were in all these different countries
and how their cultural and moral views differed as the mores and
reality of these other places rub off on the (Armenian) diaspora.
Those differences were particularly evident in the Middle East where
you had very restrictive cultures as compared to the liberal upbringing
I had in Australia.
This idea really started to come together when I found myself here
and isolated from Armenian culture altogether and these memories
bubbled back up.
I started painting these images to explore the common ground all
these women would have which would be the push and pull struggle to
fit into a new country.
Q: You mentioned to me a bit earlier that symbols where important in
your work. Can you tell me about some of the symbolism that we can
see in these paintings?
You see a lot of pomegranates in the work because they are the national
fruit of Armenia. You also see a lot of red, Prussian blue and black
in my work, which relates back to a palate of colours used for years
by Armenian artists. These colours refer back to the colours of the
Armenian flag.
I also personally like to paint fabric and shadows which relates back
to 19th-century Armenian artists who used stark blackness and sheets
of fabric to starkly shift to a darker palate rather than use more
subtle changes of colour. I’m quite fond of using contrast in that way.
Q: What’s up next for you?
I’m going to Armenia this year for the first time and I’m really
wondering what I’ll be feeling and seeing when I’m there.
I’m assuming I’ll be doing a lot of photo-documenting during my trip
and will end up painting about that when I get back.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Shaughn Butts, the Journal; Lara Chauvin and her
painting, Onward into the past at the Lando Gallery.
