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Los Angeles: Central Library exhibits explore concept of inherited trauma related to the Armenian Genocide

March 14, 2018 by administrator

Central Library exhibits, Armenian Genocide

The Downtown Central Library will host two simultaneous art exhibits that explore the concept of generational trauma associated with the Armenian Genocide.

The main exhibit, “Nonlinear Histories,” is co-curated by Ara and Anahid Oshagan as well as Isin Önol and features the works of seven artists who examine their generational ties to the Armenian Genocide by reimagining inherited artifacts.

It will run from March 17 through May 6.

The collections are inspired by the theory of “postmemory” by literature scholar and author Marianne Hirsch, which refers primarily to how the children of Holocaust survivors cope with inherited trauma.

Artists featured include Jean Marie Casbarian, Eileen Claveloux, Didem Erk, Hrayr Eulmessekian, Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Hrair Sarkissian and Glendale resident Harry Vorperian.

Ara Oshagan said there’s been no “post-memory” exhibit on the Armenian genocide, adding that it’s one of the most important concepts that tries to address ways in which second- and third-generation survivors deal with trauma.

“We sought out artists who work in this mode, dealing with grandparents and how their trauma is transported across this chasm. There is an attempt to reach across and connect with things that happen before [the] disruption [of genocide],” he said.

Artist Der Meguerditchian’s “Treasures” features 130 pages from a handwritten notebook on health remedies inherited from her great-grandmother, a genocide survivor. The notebook is one of the artifacts that she inherited from her uncle after she stopped him from unknowingly throwing it away.

“I hope the public will see what we are trying to see,” she said. “People need a space to reflect and see because lots of second and third generations were silenced by trauma, but our grand kids can now articulate a lot of things — it is necessary.”

The work from another artist, Vorperian, reimagines his grandmother’s ornate crochets into a lively garden of lilies constructed from various materials. The lilies function as public art, displayed outside the gallery and can be found throughout the library.

“[Her] colorful, large-scale wall tapestries adorned our walls, while her throw pillows, tablecloths and bed covers were spread all over the house,” Vorperian said in a statement. “It felt like living in some magical flower field somewhere in the Netherlands — or, indeed, Marash, the perennial source of my grandmother’s leaps of imagination.”

The second exhibit, “Prosperity, Loss, and Survival: A Photographic Journey from the Dildilian Family Archive,” opens March 24 and is co-curated by Armen Marsoobian. It is an organized family archive of memoirs and photographs, which were created before and survived through the Armenian Genocide.

“Armenians trace our roots back to that space [before the genocide] and having this extensive breadth of a collection is really a moment where we can stop and reflect,” Ara Oshagan said.

An opening reception will be held at the Downtown Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St., on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., with a lecture by Hirsch at 7 p.m.

University of Mosul students volunteer to restore library

August 29, 2017 by administrator

Volunteers clean debris from the library at Mosul’s university. Photos: Mustafa Khaled

Citing inaction by the Iraqi government and politicians, a group of student volunteers came together this weekend to clean the debris from the University of Mosul’s Ibn Khaldun Center Library.

“We are young, we saw our city destroyed and the government is unable to help,” the organizer of the volunteer group, Mustafa Khaled, told Rudaw English of their work on Saturday and Sunday.

“So we decided to rebuild it and prepare it to be the beautiful university it once was.”

Much of the University of Mosul was destroyed either under ISIS control or by coalition airstrikes in the operations to retake the city from the militant group.

Some 150,000 books were destroyed inside the Ibn Khaldun Center, according to the group.

“We were only able to save about 2,000 books,” said Khaled, a 21-year-old Computer Engineering student.

Several libraries across Mosul were targeted by ISIS and the books inside burned.

The University of Mosul is one of the largest education compounds in Iraq and is situated in the eastern part of Mosul that was announced fully liberated on January 24. The entire city was declared liberated on July 10.

ISIS used the university’s facilities to manufacture weapons and drones. The campus was also one of the group’s main command and control centres in eastern Mosul. In early 2016, coalition warplanes bombed the university, targeting ISIS’ headquarters there.

Khaled is calling for support in the restoration process of the University of Mosul, as the group of volunteers took it upon themselves to do the clean-up without funding.

UNDP stated it July it is helping to rehabilitate the university by providing 50 generators, deploying “cash-for-work” teams to clean the university grounds and clear debris as well as rebuilding dormitories, although Khaled’s group was not a part of such an UN-sponsored team.

“But we are far from the government and the politicians,” he said. “Most of the meetings are politicized and we want our support to be civil or international, not political.”

The UN has requested $707 million for stabilization programs in western Mosul, $174 million in eastern Mosul and another $232 million to stabilize other areas of Iraq.

Armenian church to turn into library in Turkey

March 1, 2017 by administrator

Armenia-church-to-library

The Armenian Saint Holy Mather of God Church located in Kayseri city of Turkey is planned to serve as library. Referring to Hurriyet newspaper report, Ermenihaber writes that the church has previously served as an exhibition hall, then a kindergarten and finally – a police station. The source informs the Turkish government has allocated some 6 million liras (USD 1, 600 billion) for renovation works before the building will open its doors as a public library.

Kayseri Mayor Mustafa Chelik has noted the decision to turn the church into library appears to be the most optimal, considering the designation of the structure. Apart from it, the report says a café is planned to operate adjacent to the library.

The opening of the building is scheduled for Autumn 2017, once the renovations works are completed.

Citing lack of relevant documents, the Turkish source indicates no date the church was built, noting the architectural solutions of the structure clearly reveal its Armenian origin.

Oxford’s Bodleian library to commemorate Genocide centennial

October 15, 2015 by administrator

The Bodleian library in Oxford will host an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Genocide of the Christian minority under the Ottoman Empire, which scattered surviving Armenian families and their possessions across the world, the Guardian reports.

David Howell, head of conservation research at the Bodleian library in Oxford, will use hyperspectral imaging as part of an exhibition of Armenian treasures, to restore a demon lurking in the corner of a precious 17th-century Armenian gospel that was deliberately scraped from the page by pious readers.

The creature is no longer visible to the naked eye, but once vied with the angel opposite him for the souls being weighed in the balance on judgment day, captured in the superbly illustrated gospel made by the renowned Armenian manuscript scribe, illuminator and theologian, Mesrop of Xizan, almost 400 years ago.

The Bodleian, one of the largest and oldest university libraries in the world, began collecting Armenian manuscripts in the 17th century, but many of the pieces are far older, including an 11th-century manuscript copy of John Chrysostom’s commentaries, and the only known copy of the first book printed in Iran, a book of psalms dating from 1638.

Another item on display, a matchbox-sized prayer book printed in Venice in 1831, has lengthy notes in frequently incorrect Mandarin, written in minute script by a former owner, the orientalist Solomon Caesar Malan who left his collection to the university. On one page he wrote “this is the wrong prayer”.

The exhibition will span more than 2,000 years of Armenian culture. Richard Ovenden, the director of the library, said the exhibition would have many objects of exceptional beauty.

“The Bodleian Libraries is honoured to take part in the commemorations for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by helping to share the history and culture of the Armenian people,” Ovenden said.

A crimson silk altar curtain, embroidered in silver thread, was given in 1788 to the monastery of Surb Karapet in Taron, in present-day south-east Turkey. The monastery, founded in the fourth century, was destroyed after 1915.

As well as the spectacular manuscripts, the exhibition will include more humble objects precious to the Armenian families who have loaned them, including photographs and textiles. There is a lace collar that was made in 1890 for a donor’s grandmother, and a tattered copy of a book of mystical poems by Saint Gregory of Narek passed down through generations of the same family and believed to protect the household.

A samovar and a set of coffee cups and saucers – which traditionally were used for telling fortunes from the dregs after the coffee was finished – has been loaned by the Chalvardjian family. The history of the objects illustrates the wandering lives of many Armenians after 1915. They were first used in Cilicia – now southern Turkey – and then brought with the family to Milan, Cairo and then the UK. The samovar was made in Russia, but the cups and saucers completed a circuit, originally made for export in Staffordshire.

Library In Turkey to Be Named after William Saroyan

February 13, 2015 by administrator

A view of the eastern Turkish town of Bitlis. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

BITLIS, Turkey (Armenpress)—A library in Bitlis (Armenian: Paghesh), Turkey, will be named after the prominent Armenian-American author William Saroyan, Agos weekly reports.

Journalist and author Ahmet Tuglar, who is authoring the project, noted that the idea of opening a library first came to mind when a decision was made in December of the previous year to name one of the streets in Bitlis, now a predominantly Kurdish town, after the Armenian-American author.

Saroyan was born in Fresno, California to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, who escaped the Armenian Genocide. At the age of three, after his father’s death, Saroyan was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described in his writings. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi, secured work at a cannery. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs, before becoming a successful writer.

AYF Australia Gets Robertson Book on Genocide into Libraries

December 23, 2014 by administrator

SYDNEY—The Armenian Youth Federation of Australia (AYF Australia) has announced it has succeeded in getting libraries around the country to purchase and display “An Inconvenient Genocide,” which is Geoffrey Robertson’s recently-released book on the Armenian Genocide.

Over the past month, AYF Australia worked closely with libraries in Sydney and Melbourne, writing letters and making phone calls, to ensure this book — which unequivocally proves the legal case of the Armenian Genocide — is available to be borrowed by community members, as well as students who study the Armenian Genocide as part of the New South Wales syllabus. AYF Australia advises the community to read the book and make the authorities of the country change their position on the Armenian Genocide. The Head of the Armenian National Committee of Australia, Vache Kahramanian, stated that the book will pave a great way to change the country authorities’ position on the Armenian Genocide.

Australia’s largest Armenian youth organization was pleased to announce that 13 local and university libraries have purchased the book.

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