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Unmoored Dreams

Unmoored Dreams

Diasporan-Armenian Art and the Imaginary of the Exile
For centuries , artists have served as vital agents of civilizations , ideologies and modern nations , yet their status within society has been transformed over the course of modernity . In our general understanding today , the artist is someone who stands at a remove , resisting , negating , analyzing and reconstructing the reality in which we live . Speaking from a position that is ‘ elsewhere ’, the artist is often willingly or forcibly dislocated from the systems that govern our lives : an estranged dreamer who is usually cast in the role of the tragic hero , the martyr or the mythical revolutionary . By addressing artists working in the Armenian Diaspora , we aim to reassess these perceptions in the context of Armenian art history . The present exhibition is an opportunity to think about such artists not as ‘ victims ’ of fate – cut off from their predestined place in history and native communities – but as intellectuals who , to paraphrase Edward Said , represent change by being constantly on the move and looking beyond the logic of conventional . 1 For this purpose , no setting is more fitting than the Cafesjian Centre for the Arts – an enduring proof of Diaspora ’ s transformative impact upon Armenia ’ s cultural landscape .
Selected from a private collection of international , twentieth-century graphic art , the show brings together close to sixty works created by Armenian artists living in different continents , states and artistic centers . It loosely traces modern arts ’ development throughout the past century from the perspectives of diasporan-Armenians who were integrated in this process . Some of these perspectives are well known in Armenia and outside , while many others must be discovered anew . Collectively , they also allow us to explore how the creative practices of diasporan artists complicate notions of modern Armenian art , which were being formulated in Russian and then Soviet Armenian centers , between the 1900-90s .
Our intention here is not , however , to make a speculative case for a ‘ pan-Armenian ’ art based on ethno-religious belonging – an unfortunate approach that has sullied many of the earlier attempts to historicize diasporan- Armenian art . The great diversity of styles , themes and concerns , testifies to a lack of any specific , unifying characteristic between these artists . And yet , in the catalogue of his 1979 exhibition , A Century of French-Armenian Painting , the gallerist-poet , Garig Basmadjian claimed that
the artists presented here , who have been creating outside their mother country for the last hundred years , despite the influences of prevailing French schools of painting , continue to speak one language . That language is Armenian . The spiritual link with their roots is not severed . 2
To what degree we can make this assertion when it comes to such perennially American artists like Edward Avedisian is open to debate . He didn ’ t speak Armenian , was a follower of New York school of minimalist abstraction , and had little to say about his ancestral

© Cafesjian Museum Foundation

1 . Edward Said , ‘ Intellectual Exile : Expatriates and Marginals ’, Grand Street , no . 47 , Autumn , 1993 , p . 124 . 2 . Garig Basmadjian , A Century of French-Armenian Painting ( 1879-1979 ), Galerie Gorky , Paris , 1979 .