Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The Response to Hatred: A Labor of Love

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • The Response to Hatred: A Labor of Love

    The Response to Hatred: A Labor of Love

    Artistic monuments destroyed by Azeris live on in
    Ararat Sarkissian's designs

    by Sonia Porter
    May 27, 2006


    Much of Ararat Sarkissian's art reflects a lifelong fascination with
    signs and icons. It's a fascination that goes to the heart of
    symbol-making -- its mechanics, cultural underpinnings, and evolution
    across the ages. Not surprisingly, history is a powerful constant in
    Sarkissian's paintings and graphics, making for narratives, however,
    that go beyond the linear.

    Alphabets, pictographs, architecture, urban grids, religious
    iconography. All of these spheres are by turns honored and playfully
    tweaked in Sarkissian's work, whose perhaps most salient statement is
    about movement and becoming. In his paintings of vanished cities, for
    instance, the purpose is not to inspire nostalgia or romanticize a
    glorious past, but to convey the transformation of a certain spirit
    that may be traced to the vanished space in question.

    It is no doubt the quest for such a transformation that these days
    finds Sarkissian busy in his Yerevan studio, painstakingly reproducing
    khachkars, or cross stones, that no longer exist.

    Cross stones have been a central element in Armenian architecture and
    decorative art since the 4th century. Consisting of intricate cross
    designs carved on rectangular slabs of stone, cross stones can
    function as gravestones, free-standing monuments in cathedral
    complexes, or integrated sections of church facades and other
    structures. Cross stones were also built for a wide range of social
    and political purposes. They commemorated war victories, baptisms and
    weddings, and were built as offerings to God for good luck and the
    redemption of one's sins.

    Ever since the early 19th century, Armenian cross stones have been
    casually and often systematically destroyed throughout the occupied
    territories of historic Armenia. The obliteration of cross stones
    continues today in Turkey, Nakhichevan, and Azerbaijan, where there
    was a sizeable Armenian community until the start of the
    Nagorno-Karabagh conflict in the late 1980s. In recent months, the
    razing of Armenian monuments reached fever pitch in Nakhichevan, where
    local armed forces destroyed some 3,500 cross stones in the Old Jugha
    cemetery. The incident prompted Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
    Oskanian to file a letter of protest with the United Nations.

    `The men behind the destruction of these monuments either don't
    realize or don't care that they're wiping out irreplaceable pieces of
    a rich artistic legacy,' Sarkissian said. `Their crime is being
    carried out not only against Armenian culture per se, but civilization
    as a whole. As a human being and an artist, I am saddened and
    outraged, but I also believe that I must act.'

    Sarkissian's decision to respond has resulted in one of his most
    profoundly-felt projects to date. After pouring over hundreds of
    sources such as photographs, cross stone fragments, archeologist
    drawings, and illuminated manuscripts, he has begun etching likenesses
    of extinct cross stones, then embossing the designs on paper that he
    himself makes, using a time-honored technique. The goal is to produce
    packages containing 36 designs each -- 36 being the number of letters
    in the Armenian alphabet. Each package will also include a compact
    disc documenting the destruction of cross stones and featuring
    Sarkissian at work throughout the reproduction process.

    `I wish I could help undo the damage at the Old Jugha cemetery... I'd
    love to travel there right now and start rebuilding some of those
    lovely cross stones,' Sarkissian said. `But wishful thinking won't get
    us anywhere.' He then pointed at his designs. `This project, right
    here, is my way of dealing with the brutality in Nakhichevan. I'd like
    to believe that, in a sense, I'm rebuilding what has been lost,
    through these recreations on paper; I'm helping preserve the memory.'

    History, Christian lore, folklore, and a great deal of personal
    narratives converge in Sarkissian's embossed designs. As he explained,
    the diversity of themes and styles found on cross stones offers an
    important insight into the history and artistic evolution of the
    Armenian people.

    `Armenian sculptors did not simply carve a cross on a piece of stone,'
    Sarkissian continued. `Rather, they expanded the definition of the
    design with progressively elaborate compositions.'

    Born in Gyumri, Sarkissian studied fine art in his birthplace and
    Yerevan, and has become one of Armenia's most prominent painters and
    graphic artists, exhibiting his works in Europe, the United States,
    Japan, and Russia. Several of his paintings are now part of museum
    collections throughout the world. Sarkissian has also published a
    number of catalogues, including monographs on signs, icons, and
    archetypes.


    --
    Ms. Sonia Potter has acted as philanthropic advisor to galleries,
    museums and foundations promoting artists, cultural institutions and
    humanitarian causes. She may be reached at [email protected]
Working...
X