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Artist Statement

Artist statement.

My current practice evolves around an on going state of living between places. What does it mean to be here, but not from here? Capturing inhabited spaces without the inhabitant separates the mundane and ordinary details, allowing them to stand-alone. The details of a house that go by unnoticed in our day-to-day lives echoes hints of what makes a home. While being stripped away between two places has put me on a journey of a search for a single place that is reflective of home. Thus, the uncertainty of my locality, with the physical and the mental existences being separated into two different places, allows them to converge and become one. The video is an intertwined construction of these two different places that have come together as one. It has been filmed through a course of movement from one place to the other. The imagery that comes from London is from the house that I live in, while ones of Armenia demonstrate a range of different places that is reflect of the way I feel about the place as a whole. The sound has been recorded separately from both places, from key events in Armenia that are reflective of our identity as a nation to ordinary sounds that go by unnoticed, to similar sounds such as of an elevator or a train. Once the material is recorded, it is 'collaged' together, in the same manner as a painting is painted. There is also a constant presence of light, which is at times moving faster than at others. The light and shadow, which is a natural detail that is present at both places, is one that I have focused on. The changing of the light enhances the colors in different ways, distinctive of the specific space and place, enhancing the ‘ordinary’ details. As Aaron Rose once said, “In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary”.

photo projections

Experimental photo projections, projecting photographs of familiar spaces onto different ones, creating a visual juxtaposition of the different places that have come together and overlapped, becoming one, as they have in my life. The locality that is surrounding me is an important factor for my practice, as while being physically in the UK enhances the way I perceive the space of Armenia from my memory and documentation, of the way it shapes my behavior and triggers certain emotions and visa versa. Once taken out of one geographical location and placed in the other, looking back at the photographs and the collected images, there is a more clear perception of the difference in color found in each place, starting from the brick walls to the color and intensity of the sunlight there is a clear difference, which in turn highlights the different ways in which each place and space effects the human psychology, and in this case my own.

Manually deconstructed and reinvented spaces, creating new images; images that describe the psychogeography of my own space, which help me build a visual projection of my experience.

The paintings are dehumanized translations of spaces within different places and a way to decode the cultural coding of an unfamiliar place as well as the familiar. The paintings are created both out of memory and through the help of the photographs and found images, while trying to create the theatricality of bare places through the light and composition. The subjective role of color evokes a state of mind and pulls us out of the ordinary way we see and perceive the world around us. There is a repeated use of the color blue throughout my paintings, which is symbolic of memory as while translating my memory into an image I am drawn towards using shades of blue.

Thesis summery

It is difficult to define ‘place’ or the notion of ‘place’ as it is to represent it, as to be able to represent something one must understand it and to understand one must feel it. It is safe to say then, that we must experience a place to be able to, or at least attempt to, interpret it. Place is connected with notions of belonging, identity and memory, while space offers an infinite growth and the explorations of the vastness of the universe, which then puts ‘place’ as part of space.

Furthermore, while place and objects define space, it is interesting to understand how the human tries to personify feelings, thoughts and images in touchable and palpable materials. This results in architecture and sculpture and on bigger terms cities. Within this, there is also the notion of home, an interior space and the house as a place.

Through writing and reading for my thesis, the idea of home- what it is, how it shapes us and triggers emotions is a subject that I am more and more drawn towards. I want to discuss and take the notion of ‘space’ beyond the tangible, towards looking at memory as space, a dream as a space and an emotion as a space within the home.

Jasper's and Svet's Collaboration