News
Out of the Ruins
24 April -25 May 2024
Exhibition & Residency
at Centrala Gallery, Birmingham
Image: Karen Babayan reflected in ‘Griffin 1 – The Monstrous Spectre of War’
I’m very pleased to announce my exhibition and residency as part of Centrala’s year-long Hybrid Landscapes programme, a 12-month programme of residencies focusing on research and artistic process into Central and Eastern European identity in the UK.
My work manifests my multiple hybrid identities in its ever-changing forms and the work I have chosen reflects the breadth of my multidisciplinary practise: colourful paintings and ritualised objects made early in my career; found objects with images inserted from my own family archive and from another Anglo Armenian family whose story inspired my project Swallows & Armenians; evocative text works applied directly to the walls from ‘The Storyteller of Van’, my novel in progress and large-scale photographs on aluminium taken in Eastern Turkey, historic Western Armenia whilst researching my novel. There is a connecting thread through all the work that explores my UK based, diasporan Armenian identity that is continuously challenged, shaken and roused by global political events.
A programme of events such as film screenings, dance workshops, artist bookmaking/empowering women workshops, food stories and family mapmaking workshops will enable me to connect with the Birminham Armenian community and the Centrala community to gather testimonies on Central and Eastern European identity in the UK.
For further info. click on the link below: https://bit.ly/OutoftheRuinsKarenBabayan
We are still fundraising for our latest version of Swallows and Armenians, an actor musician stage production, planning our tour for 2025 to give us plenty of time to achieve the funding we need. Our fundraising has already raised over £1000 and all donations would be used in supporting original, live theatre with an important message about celebrating diversity in British culture. Our fundraising link is below: