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Syrian-Armenian artist joins LA Master Chorale for a unique project

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A new production of Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Syrian-Armenian artist Kevork Mourad will present the oratorio’s story of human diaspora through a contemporary lens on February 11.

The one-night-only performance will be conducted by Grant Gershon, the Master Chorale’s Kiki and David Gindler Artistic Director, and feature 80 singers and 7 soloists. In addition to creating animated projections for Walt Disney Concert Hall for the performance, Mourad will be on stage, creating his paintings in real-time to be projected as he draws them.

When creating his paintings on stage, Mourad uses a small bottle of ink that he squeezes onto the page and smears with a lightning-fast technique, the results having a calligraphic quality, allowing Mourad to create a massive amount of art in a brief period of time.

It is a technique Mourad honed with “Home Within”, an acclaimed audio-visual work he co-created with Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh.

Home Within is the pair’s “impressionistic reflection on the Syrian revolution and its aftermath” that has been performed in North America and Europe including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

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New York-based Armenian artist uses smoke to explore the fragility of life and death

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Artist mher khachatryan

Artist-mher-khachatryan

New York-based Armenian artist Mher Khachatryan is intrigued by the grace he sees in smoke and fire, linking it to the wonder of life and death.

He depicts scenes in smoke created with oil on canvas, and although – especially in light of recent, tragic events – smoke isn’t generally seen as something positive, Mher looks to find beauty in it as an art form, Metro reports.

Although he is obsessed with the stuff, ironically, the artist has never tried smoking as he’s always been aware of its health risks.

‘When I was very young, one of my favorite commercials was the Marlboro commercial, where you saw this strong cowboys riding the horse in the beautiful nature and you wish you were one of them,’ said Khachatryan.

‘But the reality of the beautiful commercial was not very beautiful. Wayne McLaren, who once portrayed the “Marlboro Man” died after a long battle with lung cancer.

‘Some of his last words were: “Take care of the children. Tobacco will kill you, and I am living proof of it”.’

Khachatryan was asked to show his work at the World No Tobacco Day in May this year.

The artist first became interested in art at just five years old, and began drawing soon after.

He later began painting when he discovered his uncle’s paintings.

After being self-taught for years, he attended the Hakob Kojoyan art school in Yerevan in Armenia, and then the Art college of Panos Terlemezyan, before upping sticks and heading for the bright lights of the USA.

He started using smoke in his paintings because: ‘it reminds us of our own life, how it can just start and finish and we have no control over it’.

His next exhibition will be in Michigan, USA, at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum Grand Rapids, in September, and it will depict scenes from 9/11.

The exhibition will be dedicated to the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack.

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Glendale artist joins Armenia Culture Week in Japan

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Armenian embassy in Japan invited Glendale artist Srboohie Abajian to exhibit her art earlier this month during “Armenia Culture Week” that was held in Tokyo from May 9 to 14.

The artist showed video footage of her “Murals on the Sky” project that consists of five 9-foot-by-4-foot outdoor sculptures, depicting eyes, hands and faces that show human emotion expressed by people demanding their rights, Los Angeles Times reported.

Artist’s daughter Mayreni is currently an exchange student in Tokyo. She decided to share Armenian culture with Japanese children as part of a volunteer project organized by the embassy. There she said that her mother is an artist.

Others featured in the exhibition in Tokyo were artist Dana Walrath and the late French-Armenian painter Jean Jansem, both of Armenian origin.

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Clinton bikini/niqab mural becomes black wall as Melbourne authorities win censorship battle

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Cinton-australiaA mural of a scantily-clad Hillary Clinton created by an Australian artist was briefly changed into a Muslim woman dressed in a niqab, following a complaint by the local council. However, the latest makeover also left the authorities unimpressed.

After seeing the mural of the woman in the niqab, with just her eyes visible, which was created by a street artist known as Lushsux, Maribyrnong Council in Melbourne did not take kindly to the new creation.

A post on social media by Lushsux with the caption “Looks like the council wins” shows a council worker with a brush painting over the Muslim woman, so the wall is completely black in a move that Lushsux told RT was “pathetic.” 

The controversy originally started after Maribyrnong Council threatened Lushsux with a fine after he painted a mural of Democratic presidential candidate Clinton wearing a star-spangled swimsuit with $100 bills tucked into it. Lushsux said he got the idea from a meme on the internet and wanted to paint it so “the virality of the meme has now turned into the virality of the wall.”

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Chicago artist marks Armenian genocide with Guernica-size work

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By Tracy Rucinski

Artist Jackie Kazarian poses for a portrait i

Artist Jackie Kazarian poses for a portrait i

Artist Jackie Kazarian poses for a portrait in front of her painting for ‘Project 1915’, a commemorative piece marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, in Chicago, Illinois, March 23, 2015.
Credit: Reuters/Jim Young

(Reuters) – One hundred years after the mass killing of Armenians, a Chicago artist has created a monumental painting to honor the victims and celebrate a culture that nearly vanished.

The 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman troops left up to an estimated 1.5 million people dead and forced the exile of millions more, threatening a 3,000-year-old culture rich in architecture, literature, music and dance. It is widely seen as the 20th century’s first genocide.

Seeking to promote awareness of the culture and the tragedy, Chicago-based artist Jackie Kazarian embarked on a painting of enormous scale, called Project 1915, to be displayed for the first time in Chicago’s Mana Contemporary from April 17 to May 29.

Artist Kazarian poses for a portrait in front of her painting for "Project 1915", a commemorative piece marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, in ChicagoProject 1915 is a semi-abstract landscape splashed with bold images and text from ancient Armenian maps and church architecture, united by a pattern of needle lace by Kazarian’s Armenian-born grandmother and with colors and symbols from illuminated manuscripts.

Kazarian, who has Armenian roots, drew on Pablo Picasso’s epic painting Guernica, which depicts the horror of a northern Spanish village’s bombing during Spain’s civil war, for her painting.

It is the exact same size as Guernica at 11.5 feet by 26 feet.

“No one would have known what happened in Guernica if it wasn’t for that painting,” Kazarian said.

The nature and scale of the killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War One remain highly contentious.

While a number of countries define the massacres as genocide and while Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting, the Turkish government denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this was an act of genocide.

Last year Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan made unprecedented condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians killed at the time, but the legacy remains an obstacle to reviving frozen relations between Turkey and neighboring Armenia, a small former Soviet territory.

In Kazarian’s paintings, two open hands span the bottom corners, as if holding up the work and an entire culture. It is a gesture Kazarian said she remembers her grandmother often using.

“This is a very visceral, emotional project. But like any art that references a painful past, it is about remembering, healing and educating ourselves to make a better world,” Kazarian said.

After its Chicago exhibition the non-profit painting will travel to universities and galleries across the United States and the world before it is donated to a cultural institution for a permanent home.

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Gifted Gaza child artist finds inspiration despite hardship

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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Seven years ago, in the old Shujaiyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, the artistic talent of Mohammad Qureiqai, 12, was discovered as he was making pencil sketches in his notebook. His journey of being Qureiqai_1acknowledged as a creative artist began.

Mohammad’s eldest brother, Malek, 23, could not believe his eyes when he saw a sketch drawn by Mohammad, who was only five years old at the time. He asked him to redo the sketch multiple times, to make sure that Mohammad had worked on it by himself. Then, Malek started to help him with the drawings, assisting him in coming up with new ideas for his paintings, which were initially produced using only pencil and charcoal.

Al-Monitor met Mohammad in his humble studio, a small room on the rooftop of his two-story house. After school, Mohammad spends long hours in the studio, where he has placed the oil and pencil paintings he produced over seven years ago.

Each painting has a story, and whenever the young artist is asked about a certain painting, he recounts how he came up with the idea and drew it, and the time it took him to make it ready for display. Mohammad was asked to produce some paintings to display in exhibitions about Palestinian causes, like prisoners in Israeli jails, the Nakba and other subjects. However, he is most interested in the paintings whose ideas he has come up with, and he enjoys talking about them at length.

Qureiqai_8“I go to sleep and wake up dreaming of new drawings. My life has now become my drawings and paintings. Everything you see around me are ideas for old or new paintings,” Mohammad said with a shy smile, explaining the importance painting holds for him.

“A few days ago, I sat for official school exams. After I finished my test, the supervisor would not let me go until the time was up, so I drew on the answer sheet to pass time. This angered the teacher, who asked me to erase the drawing before submitting it,” he said.

He tries to develop his painting skills through self-learning on the Internet, examining the paintings of other artists and continuously watching videos on YouTube that explain the correct methods to paint objects in such a way that they appear three dimensional.

“With the help of my brother Malek, I try to learn new drawing methods by using the Internet, and find ideas to put on canvas,” he said.

“My neighbors told me more than once: ‘Drawing is useless. Work to make a living,’” he said.

Mohammad is determined to become an internationally renowned artist, saying, “I want to study fine arts after I finish school to develop my capacities and talent,” adding, “I hope to live outside Palestine where art and drawing are valued, and where I can meet international and famous artists.”

All phoQureiqai_5tos of Mohammad Qureiqai, 12, with his paintings and sketches at his home in Gaza City, May 13, 2014. Taken by: Hazem Balousha

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