Out of the Ruins - Exhibition & Residency by Karen Babayan at Centrala Gallery, Birmingham 24 April- 25 May

At a moment when nations are once again at loggerheads and colonial powers continue to subjugate indigenous populations, Karen Babayan’s work is uncomfortably pertinent. Throughout her long career, Babayan has advocated for recognition of the Armenian Genocide 1915-1923 whilst exploring multiple hybrid identities and family histories through uncompromising work.

This multi-disciplinary artist is the consummate storyteller, through both images and words: colourful paintings and ritualised objects made early in her career, sumptuously evoke the colour and form of religious and pagan iconography that mask the violence, weapons and monstrosity of war. In contrast, found objects that relate to both her own history and those of others are loaded with references. Recent photographs on aluminium tell another story of ongoing, state-sponsored cultural genocide in the province of Van, Eastern Turkey (historic Western Armenia and the Van Catholicosate), a place where human remains are shockingly easy to find. Scattered amongst the ruins and written on the walls of the gallery are also passages from the pages of Babayan’s forthcoming novel, ‘The Storyteller of Van’, that evoke the once vibrant communities, now long dead and displaced.

The exhibition’s title is a reverant nod to Armenian activist and writer Zabel Yessayan’s book ‘Among the Ruins’ Աւերակներու մէջ (Constantinople 1911), a first-hand account of the aftermath of the 1909 massacres of Armenians in Adana, Turkey.

Babayan’s exhibition ‘Out of the Ruins’ recognises and acclaims the resilience of the Armenian nation in their small, precariously independent nation state as well as those in the Armenian diaspora whose multiple hybrid identities are a necessary strategy of survival borne out of a tumultuous history of genocide and displacement.

This exhibition and residency is part of Centrala’s year-long Hybrid Landscapes, a 12-month program of residencies focusing on research and artistic process into Central and Eastern European identity in the UK.

Gallery opening times: Tues-Sat 10am-6pm