Second Annual Queernissage held in Los Angeles

The event was tucked in an alley in Studio City, making the area vibrant with the variety of people present, and with the crafts that vendors were selling. Attendees could have bought anything from spices, jewelry, pottery, posters, books, and even food.

Erik Adamian, the co-founder of Charachchi and Board President of GALAS, spoke about the hypocrisy of Armenians who oppress LGBTQ+ voices within their community, and how this has historically been done to Armenians by others for millennia. For Adamian, balancing his gay identity with his Armenian one has been an internal struggle that he says many people confront.

“I’m as much an Armenian and Iranian person as I am gay,” Adamian said. “I struggled to find space for all of these identities together, because I was told I could either be queer, or I could be Armenian.”

Adamian describes Charachchi as a multimedia project for queer Armenians. He says that queer Armenian stories are often rooted in trauma, so he takes a more lighthearted approach when telling their stories. He and Perch Melikyan co-founded the project and had a stand at Queernissage. They conducted interviews with attendees who wanted to participate and asked them unconventional questions such as “What is the gayest part about you?” and told participants to curse them in Armenian at the end of their interview.

Adamian was 14 years old when he immigrated from Iran, and at the time did not understand the concept of coming out. He said he always knew he was attracted to men, but thought that he would just marry a woman and live out the rest of his life without being his true self. After high school he began to come out to himself, but also began to distance himself from the Armenian community during college. However, he felt a void that was caused by the absence of his ethnic identity.

“Something very big and important was missing from me. And that was my Armenianness and my Iranianness,” Adamian said.