Being exposed to the past implies adopting an attitude of redemption from the present, especially when we speak of the extermination of a people. What are the motives that lead human beings to act with cruelty and violence toward others? In what historical circumstances does such a perverse need arise, and from which groups? How can we understand the forced deportation and massacre of a nation under the domination of another? Asking questions grounds any discussion, and in our era of crisis, the more unsettling the question, the more likely it is to help elucidate certain problems.
We are witnessing an era that drags along ancestral conflicts while new ones emerge. Massacres, sadly, are commonplace, resulting all too often in the systematic annihilation of entire groups of people. This annihilation, however, is not truly annihilation, as it strives to preserve the memory of the threatened culture, making itself present among the generations who inherit the trauma. These generations bear responsibility for that past from a present that looks back with redemptive intent — what Walter Benjamin affirmed in his “Second Thesis on the Philosophy of History” — after an acceptance of genuine commitment, a rule across time. It is from this state that memory becomes a means through which outstanding accounts are addressed.
When we approach a fragmented memory, far removed from what is imaginable, we are referring to loose pieces that take flight from the testimonies of survivors and their whispers, heard by subsequent generations, mostly in contexts of exile, treasuring silenced secrets as well as subtle recollections. It is here that artistic expressions emerge, appealing to the senses.
And so, through the visual arts created by post-genocide generations, we perceive that the channel carved by memory could only reveal itself in a silenced way — a channel imbued with murmurs whose flow not only grew but also expanded its connection to the wounded past. From this interpretation arose the exhibition “Riverbed of a silenced memory,” held in 2016 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, within the framework of the Chair of Holocaust, Genocide and the Fight Against Discrimination, chaired by Dr. Roberto Malkassian.
Although far removed from the massacres, the artists became auditory witnesses to the hidden secrets and traumas carried forward — to a wounded muteness that began to find its voice after one or two generations.
Let’s approach one of those voices.
Victims (2015), oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 × 90 cm, by Violetta Simonian
Violetta Simonian presents the victims through a play of glazes whose chromatic transparencies encapsulate the harrowing subject matter within a realm of subtlety: a female figure is depicted from the waist up, while three heads appear as distant apparitions. Reds, blues and violets mingle with patches of brown, white and yellow. The figure holding the glass bears witness to the scene, a living presence, while the basket of reddish-tinted eggs reminds us of Jesus Christ’s victory over death. The only male face, pierced by a cross in the background, has closed eyes, while the other two, both female, are lost in the void.
After a harrowing memory of her great-uncle’s decapitation and the subsequent suffering of his wife, whose eyes were gouged out by an Ottoman soldier, the artist abstracts the torment and conveys it, accompanied by the souls of her relatives, embodied in cranes that, though small, travel great distances and evoke the Armenian landscape. The grief is so profound that Simonian returns to the motif on subsequent occasions, unable to shake the chilling vision of her family members’ heads.
Art’s unfathomable imprint shapes the temporal ebb and flow from the silence of pain to the silence of denunciation. This ebb and flow is where the memory of that torrent emerges — not only increasing but also, with time, elevating a greater awareness of this genocide that continues to cry out for justice.
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