We Are Still Here, Still Bleeding (2022)

“We Are Still Here, Still Bleeding” is rooted in my attempt to visualize the perpetual figurative and symbolic hemorrhaging of Armenians and the silence of world powers towards the recent histories of conflict with Azerbaijan.
The pattern of the carpet is drawn from images of microscopic blood samples and pastiched together with the holes in the carpet carefully unwoven to allow light to pass through the cracks. The overall carpet becomes a blood smear revealing old, reopened wounds. This piece is designed and developed in Yerevan, Armenia, where I learned to weave with a traditional Armenian weaving technique. This period coincides with the current political instability (since 2020) and the ongoing Azeri military aggression against Armenian citizens, territories, and cultural and built heritage.

I developed this piece intentionally for the exhibition Unweave, Unveil: Chiral Landscapes of Exile, which was a dialogue between two artists, Eugenia Reznik and Patil Tchilinguirian, based on the intimate narratives of uprootedness, belonging, and the importance of listening and of connections made with one’s own cultures and those of others.