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Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Absence/Presence > Absence/Presence Artists : Robert Barsamian

Robert Barsamian

Robert Barsamian is a Dallas based artist of Armenian descent, who during the 1980s decided to work through the questions of the Armenian genocide through art. The process has been time-consuming and obsessive, but also rewarding. Barsamian, like many 2nd and 3rd generation Armenian-Americans, deals with a past, as in the Holocaust, was hidden by the victim generation. It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that Armenians began to speak openly about the massacres of 1915-1922, now referred to my most academics and some governments as a "Genocide." Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the word "genocide" became interested in the subject because of the stories he heard from his mother and grandmother, in his native Poland in the early 1970s, about the destruction of the Armenians.

Barsamian raises the important question: Can art help in understanding the history, the memory and the trauma?

• Catalogue - Pages from My Diary
• About the Artist
• Curriculum Vitae
• Review from Pittsburgh Post Gazette

"The Story of Luco." Room installations. Size varies. 1989-90.

"Three Messages." Mixed media installation. Detail, left view. 8'x30'. 1990.

Far right: Bird Alphabet Painting on Wall. 4' x 3'6". 1990.

"After All ..." Mixed media installation. Detail. 12'x30'. 1990.

"In the heat of the desert they fed upon the children." Mixed media installation. Size varies.

"In the heat of the desert they fed upon the children" Mixed Media Installation. 66.25' x 120". 1991.

"Pomegranates & Wolves" Mixed Media Installation. 81" x 208". 1991.

 

"This is My Body." Mixed media installation. 72 x 84. 1993.

"21 Border Street." Mixed media installation. 78 x 114. 1993.

"Motherland." Mixed media installation.  1993. Size Varies.

"Something Remembered Is Never Forgotten." Mixed media installation. 1993.

"Passage." Mixed media installation. 12' x 10' x 4'. 1994.

"Ashfall." Room installation. Size varies.

Title Piece of Installation. 68" x 90" x 6". With Shelf Jars. 1996-97.	"Demitasse". Detail of "Ashfall." Mixed Media Installation. 35" x 46" x 6". 1996-97.	"My Father's Mother Remembered". Detail of "Ashfall". Mixed Media Installation. 56" x 48" x 6" w/shelf. 1996.
"The Promise". Detail of "Ashfall". Mixed Media Installation. 34" x 38" x 2" with table. 1996-97.	Installation Shot	"And If..." Detail of "Ashfall." Mixed Media Installation. 60" x 80" x 6". Bronze cross with shelf. 1996-97.

 

 

"Road to Aleppo." Mixed Media Installation. 1998.

Angels of Mercy	The Herald	Fields of Play	Beneath the Blessing
Flight of the Innocent	Guardian	Harvest	The Last Thread
The Virgin Bride	Valor	Undo Influence	Whispering