Supervised by Dr. Felicity T. C. Hamer, December 2, 2024

“Trauma is not so much what happened to us, but, rather, what we hold inside, in the absence of  an empathetic witness.” 
– Dr. Peter A. Levine, in An Unspoken Word 

How does one engage with the invisible, silenced and erased? How can art bear witness to the darkest moments of human history, namely, torture, violence and sexual slavery, while holding space for human connection? These questions concern the practice of Marie Khediguian, a Canadian visual artist and a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors.¹ Her paintings titled  Եղբայրներ (Brothers) (oil on canvas, 3×4 feet) and Bearing Witness (oil on canvas, 2.5×6 feet) are two out of the three pieces exhibited in the VAV (Visual Arts Visuels) Gallery’s fall general programming (2024- 2025) Ballads of Displacement. 

While I concentrate on these two pieces for their stylistic similarities and shared materiality, I also acknowledge their differing contexts. Եղբայրներ (Brothers) is rooted in an immediate, personal space, depicting the artist’s surviving family and their journey through diasporic identity in a contemporary Canadian landscape. Conversely, Bearing Witness engages with a distant ancestral memory, addressing the collective trauma of the Armenian genocide and the gendered violence faced by its victims. My intentional decision to exclude the third painting displayed in the exhibition, Alexandria, allows for a deeper examination of the intricate dialogue between these two works,  highlighting Khediguian’s exploration of intergenerational trauma and diasporic identity. 

Upon entering the gallery space, the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the three pieces on the right-hand side. Presented from the smallest, Alexandria, to Եղբայրներ (Brothers), then moving to the largest piece in the room, Bearing Witness. The flow unveils a distant past, transitions to a tangible present, and culminates in an erased history. “Եղբայրներ (Brothers) highlights themes of family bonds and collective memory within diasporic identity. It takes themes that many families endure but looks at it through the lens of the diaspora of a displaced people,” says Khediguian, elaborating on the first piece in an interview.²

The image reflects the peace and tranquillity of the two brothers in a domestic setting, with calm expressions, carrying a glimpse of the contemporary, not only through their modern clothing but also through a blue face mask, hinting at the lingering effects of the COVID-19  pandemic. “The emotional gravity (the direct eye contact and serious look of the brothers), and the underlying seriousness of the pandemic echo the intergenerational struggles that the family continues to endure through a diasporic framework,” Khediguian explains.“³ The clothing patterns worn by the brothers are contemporary and more Canadian in style, creating a visual disconnect from the culturally Armenian surroundings, such as the furniture and rugs. This  contrast highlights the tension between their present-day identities and their ancestral roots.”⁴

The brothers, and by extension, her surviving family, are her means of connection with her heritage and a portal to the past— a gateway to what ‘once was’ through oral histories. It is through connections and family members that she navigates her dual identity. 

Oral histories preserve what gets disregarded in official archives.⁵ They play an even more substantial role in Khediguian’s practice: “A lot of our lives as Armenians in our family were left behind. My grandparents were orphaned by the genocide and very young when they were displaced into orphanages. Later, my parents immigrated from Egypt in the 1960s, [and they were] not allowed to bring more than a certain amount of belongings. They came without even a winter coat and were only allowed to bring $20.”⁶ For families like Khedugians, oral histories mediate individual and collective memories, specifically in light of exile or forced displacement by means beyond their control.⁷

In contrast to the intimacy seen in Եղբայրներ (Brothers), Bearing Witness is drastically devoid of all familial warmth. The oil on canvas painting depicts three nude women bound upside down by a red rope in an unclear setting. Their bodies are twisted in physically challenging positions, leaving the viewer unsure if they are living or dead. “This theme of absence plays a role in my broader work,” says Khedugian. “What’s missing can be just as significant as what’s present… What’s absent is the source of that entanglement- the perpetrator and the context of what happened before or after. The painting captures a frozen moment in time, leaving those absences open to interpretation and emphasizing their significance.”⁸

Their family, much like many other Armenians at the time, faced unimaginable systematic violence, sexual brutality being a part of oppression endured by Armenian women.  “Like many cultures, we have oral stories passed down through generations- common tales we hear as children. These stories cover a wide range of topics, from life before the genocide to the  horrors of the genocide itself and the places where our families eventually settled before facing  yet another forced migration.”⁹Oral histories, in association with post-memory, enable  Khedugian to confront fragments of a traumatic historical event. Post-memory refers to second-generation memory, where children of survivors engage with traumatic histories not through direct experience but through imaginative investment.¹⁰ Combining aspects of mnemonic imagination into her practice, she negotiates a bridging of spatial-temporal boundaries that stimulates both memory and imagination. Keightley and Pickering call this phenomenon mnemonic imagination, defined as “an active synthesis of remembering and imagining, which is essential to our understanding of relationships between the past, present and future.”¹¹

Bearing Witness comes from the mixture of real events and mnemonic imagination; events that Khedugian herself has not seen nor experienced yet shape her understanding of her internal world and her external Canadian identity. The realities of the genocide, particularly the acts of sexual violence and slavery enforced on women, might be overlooked when discussing war and genocide. “The embodied trauma of victims of sexual abuse and forced marriage have  been, at times, deemed too personal and too emotional to be worthy of historical study.”¹² Khediguian elaborates on the gendered sexual violence further: “This sexual violence as a weapon of war has lasting implications for the Armenian community’s perception of women’s sexuality. Victims of such violence were often viewed as “tainted” and ostracized. Even women rescued from sexual trafficking—such as those sold into slavery—were frequently shunned when reintegrated into Armenian society. This societal shame gave the violence its enduring power.”¹³

These absences expand further into historical documentation and lost records. During the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, there has been considerable destruction of documentation, serving both as an act of historical erasure of the Armenian identity as well as historical denial.¹⁴ The sentiment persisted for over a hundred years, and contemporary Turkish officials tried to reframe the genocide as a consequence of wartime conditions rather than a deliberate act of erasure. This ongoing denial continues to impact many displaced families, including the Khediguian family.¹⁵ “My ancestors were from what is now eastern  Turkey, a place they were exiled and expelled from. The idea of visiting that region feels impossible for me. The sight of the Turkish flag, the current president’s genocide denial, and the human rights violations against minorities—all of it is deeply triggering. Hearing Turkish words  or thinking about that space feels like a wound I can’t approach.”¹⁶ As Hirsch notes, the children of survivors often express a deep connection to the land, in Khedugian’s case, Armenia, even though she was not formally from the country known today as such. “Visiting Armenia for the first time this summer, I felt a profound connection to the land. But even then, I knew it wasn’t where my family came from.”¹⁷ The children of survivors experience a sense of exile from a world they never knew, shaped by the destruction of their parents’ home.¹⁸ These experiences speak deeply to the post-memory that shaped her identity and connections. According to Mariane Hirch, post-memory can be defined as a mediated memory wherein children of survivors of traumatic events—such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide—engage with these intergenerational wounds via a link of imaginative investment.¹⁹ One of the ways to engage with post-memory, according to Hirsch, is through photographs, thereby recreating connections and mourning as a way to feed her artistic practice and reconnect. “There was a lot of pouring over photographs that managed to make their way here, and many stories were being told,” notes Khediguian. “It felt like we were creating myths from our own past. The way these stories were told captured the attention of my parents, especially my mother.”²⁰

The display of violence in art institutions has often been sanitized and considered to be a masculine act. The contrast between the masculine, quasi-religious depiction of brutality and the unspoken lingering impacts of sexual slavery enforced on Armenian women is striking and demonstrates the division of gendered violence.²¹ This is most notable in war museums, which were predominantly founded after World War I. These institutions are seen as places to honour the dead and have developed a flair for religiosity in commemorating war efforts.²² Historically, visitors have perceived these spaces as a place to fill the voyeuristic desire for depictions of war.²³ The result of this desire is that war museums redact the violence happening on the front lines,²⁴ while manifesting the ruling state’s power by the display of war technologies.²⁵ However, the experience and damage enforced on civilians—particularly women—are not held in the same regard in war museums. Resultingly, “women’s bodies themselves are treated as historical documents worthy of historical study through engagement with a number of interdisciplinary  fields.”²⁶

As a Canadian artist whose works connect with the themes of memory, mnemonic imagination, and intergenerational trauma, Khediguian expresses a duality in her experience of either part of her identity: “I’m caught between two worlds, a space where I don’t fully fit into either.” Beyond this personal struggle, she also carries a lingering sense of mourning from the ancestral roots that are forcibly severed, a connection to her ancestral culture, and having to confront the harsh realities of her  Armenian heritage while combating the systematic denial of the Turkish government.²⁷ “My life’s work is to educate people about the Armenian struggle. It is to put a name to the faceless statistics and create a connection with others. It is also a way to feel less hopeless in the face of injustice. I aim to also have people connect their own stories with these broader narratives to feel more connected with people outside of themselves. As a result, I hope to make a community of people who care about their fellow humans.”²⁸

In short, Marie Khediguian’s work as a Canadian artist and activist seeks to reclaim her Armenian heritage by inviting the viewer’s gaze into a glimpse of her personal and intergenerational heritage. She explores issues of memory and trauma, to navigate the fine line between her dual identity Her work touches upon histories that sought to be erased but are kept alive. Through her work, she offers a space for intergenerational healing if there are compassionate witnesses to behold what has been and should never be again. 

Dedication from the Artist: This post is dedicated to my parents, who left us too soon. I take up their mantle to uplift the stories and experiences of the Armenian people and to support the Armenian community. Their stories, sacrifices, and unwavering support shaped the artist I am today. My work is a tribute to their resilience and the histories they carried. I carry them with me always. – Marie Khediguian

Footnotes

¹Marie Khediguian, artist statement for Ballads of Displacement (VAV Gallery, Montreal, 2024).
²Marie Khediguian, interview by Emitees Tajdari, November 16, 2024, response to question 7. 
³Khediguian, interview, response to question 9.
⁴Khediguian, interview, response to question 9.
⁵Felicitas Söhner, “Oral History in Exile Studies – Potentials and Limitations,” in Urban Exile: Theories, Methods,  Research Practices, ed. Burcu Dogramaci et al., NED-New edition. (Intellect, 2023), 77, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2458925.8. 
⁶Khediguian, interview, response to question 1.
 ⁷Söhner, “Oral History in Exile Studies,” 72.
⁸Khediguian, interview, response to question 3.
⁹Khediguian, interview, response to question 6.
¹⁰Marianne Hirsch, “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile,” Poetics Today 17, no. 4 (1996): 659–86, https://doi.org/10.2307/1773218.
¹¹Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 7. 12.   
¹²Elyse Semerdjian, “Introduction,” in Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 2023), 7, https://www.sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/remnants.
¹³Khediguian, interview, response to question 6. 
¹⁴Tim Arango, “A Century after Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens,” The New York Times,  April 16, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/europe/turkeys-century-of-denial-about-an-armenian genocide.html. 
¹⁵Arango, “A Century after Armenian Genocide.” 
¹⁶Khediguian, interview, response to question 4.
¹⁷Khediguian, interview, response to question 4.
¹⁸Hirsch, “Past Lives,” 659–86
¹⁹Hirsch, “Past Lives,” 659.
²⁰Khediguian, interview, response to question 1.
²¹Jay Winter, “Museums and the Representation of War,” in Does War Belong in Museums?: The Representation  of Violence in Exhibitions, ed. Wolfgang Muchitsch (Transcript Verlag, 2013), 22-23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxr1z.5. 
²²Winter, “Museums and the Representation of War,” 22-23.
²³Winter, “Museums and the Representation of War,” 33-34. 
²⁴Ibid. 
²⁵Semerdjian, “Introduction,” 10.
²⁶Semerdjian, “Introduction,” 12. 
²⁷Khediguian, interview, response to question 4. 
²⁸Khediguian, interview, response to question 10.

Appendix 

To access the interview transcription, please use the link provided below:  ARTH 373: Interview Question Audio Transcription 

Bibliography 

Arango, Tim. “A Century after Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens.” The New  York Times, April 16, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/europe/turkeys century-of-denial-about-an-armenian-genocide.html.  

Khediguian, Marie. Artist statement for Ballads of Displacement. VAV Gallery, Montreal, 2024. Khediguian, Marie. Interview by Emitees Tajdari. November 16, 2024. 

Hirsch, Marianne. “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile.” Poetics Today 17, no. 4 (1996): 659–86.  https://doi.org/10.2307/1773218.  

Keightley, Emily, and Micheal Pickering. The Mnemonic Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan  Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2012.  

Semerdjian, Elyse. “Introduction.” Essay. In Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian  Genocide, 5–26. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2023.  https://www.sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/remnants.

Söhner, Felicitas. “Oral History in Exile Studies – Potentials and Limitations.” In Urban Exile:  Theories, Methods, Research Practices, edited by Burcu Dogramaci, Ekaterina Aygün,  Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, and Helene Roth, NED-New edition.,  72–83. Intellect, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2458925.8.  

Winter, Jay. “Museums and the Representation of War.” In Does War Belong in Museums?: The  Representation of Violence in Exhibitions, edited by Wolfgang Muchitsch, 21–38.  Transcript Verlag, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxr1z.5.