Substantiating Memories
This article analyses the contribution by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi to the exhibition Armenity, curated by Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg for the Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Art in 2015. Reflecting upon two pieces from the artists, and putting them in relation with b...
Guardado en:
| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/eac, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lenguaje: | Anglais |
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Études arméniennes contemporaines
2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumario: | This article analyses the contribution by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi to the exhibition Armenity, curated by Adelina Cüberyan v. Fürstenberg for the Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Art in 2015. Reflecting upon two pieces from the artists, and putting them in relation with both the location on the San Lazzaro Island, and the celebration of the one-hundred-year commemoration of the Armenian genocide, the article proposes that the testimonial video Return to Khodorciur (1986) and the water-coloured Armenian Roll (1989-1991) materially substantiate the memory of the stories they tell. The features of the electronic image and the aesthetic of the video-testinomy in Return to Khodorciur, and the object per se as well as the reference to Armenian fables in Armenian Roll are able to render the generational legacy passed from Gianikian’s father to Ricci Lucchi and him. I suggest that the works on display offer to the viewers what I term image-objects, that is, images crafted by the artists to substantiate the material dimension of remembrance. At the same time, such images thematise the tension between erasure and presence, oppression and resistance, to the extent that producing them becomes a strategy to give shape to the artists’ effort to exist and resist – to r-exist. |
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