Based on my ties to the Eurasian continent, West Asia – the so-called “Orient” – I deal with cultural continuities and their ruptures, borrowing from bureaucratic, archaeological, criminological and reconstructive methods. Indigenous and transformed traditions, rituals, natures, technology, architecture, pop culture, folk art and mass culture disintegrate and form condensed toy worlds in my imagination. My practice is necessarily intersectional; it is informed by my own complex experiences of racialization and marginalization, consequential chronic conditions, as well as experiences of systemic violence in various political systems that have been passed down through my family history over generations and which, being unresolved, remain politically charged.

Forensic Excavations Inventory or The Total Deconstruction of an Armenian Family

My life is sometimes described by others as a “true crime”.

This work tells an autobiography that begins before my birth, with my family’s escape from the Ottoman Empire in 1917. I took apart the remaining part of my family photo archive, about 150 photos that connect West Asia, the Balkans, East Germany and the reunified Berlin of the 1990s.

I scanned and cut out thousands of objects from the photo archive, such as toys, furniture, body parts belonging to me or family members. For each object I write down something I remember or information about its origin or meaning. I then enlarge the objects, print and mount them, cut them out of the material with a scalpel and photograph them again. Since 2017, I have been staging the objects in private and public spaces and combined them with historical photos and online archives, where I found photos of my relatives. The objects, removed from their original private context, lose their representative function and are transformed into evidence of personal everyday experiences of socialism, migration, flight, traditions, racism, family secrets, abuse, genocide and consumer culture, false identities.  The once complete family picture literally and figuratively breaks apart and opens up an intermediate level on which I can express myself.

My limited private family photo archive has expanded into a much larger number of new photos and a archive of the everyday that uncovers previously invisible truths.