Mixed Media, 2024
Flesh, Immemorial
Flesh Immemorial is a creative experiment in the undoing of absence, a kaleidoscopic super(im)position of queer and/or feminist Western Armenian activists onto their home-landscapes of origin. These mixed-media monuments are radical interventions of place and land from which they descend but may not have access to.
About
Many felt the echoes of the Armenian Genocide since the war in Artsakh, with large portions of our homelands lost, countless buried and displaced. Accordingly, this project will creatively restore the relationships of indigenous Armenians with their ancestral landscapes. Together we will form a constellation of mixed media that generate ancestral healing, diasporic futurism, and creative reclamation of land and belonging.
In relationship with the project participants, we will generate these monuments by collaborating both aesthetically and by way of the ethereal – with the stories, spirits, flora and fauna of our homelands. This is especially poignant work for SWANA peoples, as we continue to survive displacement and live with intergenerational trauma.
The first installment includes elements from archival and current day landscapes, sites, and maps. It is a collaboration with Sara Abrams, whose great grandmother was from Erzerum. She was kidnapped as a child several times – and so her family, the Ketchabashians, fled their homeland in 1905 due to increasing threats. Echoes of this story ring too close to home today, through the current situation in Artsakh.
Follow Kamee on Instagram for updates and email them at lorikamee (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re interested in hosting this project
Special thanks to the Gulbenkian Foundation for their generous support of this project.
