Aylin Vartanyan
Life-Giving Stories, Fermented Memories
What I remember most vividly about my grandma Koharig is her restlessness and her extraordinary talent for preparing food. She could bring together whatever was available at home and make a delicious meal. She gave meaning to her life by constantly cooking and feeding her loved ones (sometimes forcefully). Maybe that was her way of telling the family stories she couldn't put into words. Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, opened a critical window onto the notion of the hero in literature. Instead of heroic narratives that often devolve into destructive power over time, she proposed carrier narratives. She reminded us that the first cultural tool wasn’t a weapon for killing, but a bag used to carry and preserve. This view, supported by anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher, places survival, nourishment, and transformation at the center of narrative.
Silva Bingaz and Opus 3c: In Pursuit of the Unseen and the Unrecorded
Artist photographer Silva Bingaz’s exhibition, Opus 3c, opened on February 17 at Öktem Aykut Art Gallery (İstanbul) . Bingaz’s photography goes beyond the conventional act of “taking a photograph” (capturing an image and taking it away). Through her predominantly black-and-white frames, she translates the divine moment of encounter between images and the gaze into an infinite narrative in the most intimate way possible. Drawing from her new exhibition, we spoke with Bingaz about the processes of documenting the acts of “giving birth; and the efforts to record the act of bringing into existence, the act that remains unrecorded and rather traditionally unknown”
A Never- Ending Search: Where Is Home?
The independent theater group Hangardz brought Saroyan’s play My Heart’s in the Highlands to life under the direction of Tara Demircioğlu and Yeğya Akgün, delivering a performance that deeply moved audiences and earned accolades. For nearly three seasons, it graced various stages in Istanbul. After the group’s tour in Armenia, the idea for the documentary emerged, revisiting themes explored in the play, such as belonging, roots, longing for home, and a sense of safety.
Solidarity From “Women to Women” Against Gendered Violence
The International Hrant Dink Award ceremony turned into a celebration for women this year, and later created a discussion area where we could talk about ‘woman-to-woman’ solidarity models. When it comes to Armenian women living in the diaspora, there is not enough space to talk about violence against women in the public sphere. Different practices of violence against women and girls that remain behind closed doors can be buried in silence
Madam Martha and a Tale of Speculation
Remembering the story of Martha, after whom the cove is named, may help us understand the latest developments on the beach. There seems to be a significant parallel between the perspective that objectifies and exploits a woman's body and the desire to possess and control a rare beach like Martha Cove. Martha Arat was a Lebanese Armenian woman, born in 1920. When her father was appointed to the Ottoman Bank, she came to Istanbul at a young age and attended Saint Benoit High School.
Can we illuminate our dark future?
On Wednesday, April 24th, alongside Nesim Ovadya İzrail, our memory walk with approximately twenty participants led us to a point where we encountered the memory of spaces where Armenian intellectuals, whose stories we have read in books and their photographs we have seen in commemorative ceremonies, once converged. As one participant noted, during our walk, "unlike official history, what happened appeared more real to us.”
About the ‘Hay Gin’ Performance
Getronagan students live each female character not only through the text, but also by dressing, speaking, acting and communicating like that character. In this context, the show 'Hay Gin' also inspires us as a pedagogical model.
Carrying the Mourning
This highly evocative performance can be interpreted differently by each viewer at a time when earthquakes, wars, and consequently forced migrations take up a lot of space in our psyches throughout the world. For Armenians like myslef, who are trying to fill in the gaps of the migration stories in their family history, this performance would probably have very strong echoes in their inner world.
On the way to becoming women who write
Ernaux's first years of writing coincide with the times when the women in our family could not write. We should also remember the reality that writing was interrupted for Armenian women, and that their priorities were confined to domestic and extra-domestic labor to sustain their families and themselves.
Broken Memory and Natal Alienation
Lang's selection of photographs traces the Armenian heritage in Turkey, including the ruins of churches, houses and monasteries, hybrid structures that emerge from the combination of two incompatible architectural styles of two different eras, and natural environments with an unsettling tranquility. The first question I asked myself, especially when I first saw the photographs of Armenian heritage, was why my knowledge of the stories carried by these ruined architectural structures frozen in time was so limited.