WATERTOWN — The Armenian Museum of America will host a series of programs the weekend of September 23-24, highlighted by an artist panel discussing Ara Oshagan’s “Disrupted, Borders” exhibition currently showing in the museum’s contemporary galleries.
The event will bring Oshagan together with curator Ryann Casey, art critic Hrag Vartanian and Prof. Christina Maranci, all of whom touch upon contemporary art and politics in their respective work.
The panel, titled “The Image as Disruption and Identity,” is free and open to the public, and will take place in the Adele and Haig Der Manuelian Galleries on Saturday, September 23, at 2 p.m., followed by a light reception. The museum is also offering free admission for all visitors that weekend, along with free guided tours of “Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders” to its members.
“This show connects many of the diasporic and homeland entanglements that have occupied me over the past decade or more, from Los Angeles to Beirut to Artsakh,” states Oshagan. With more than 55 works on display, “Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders” combines photography, collage, installation, and film.
“The panel will concentrate on the role that image-making plays in our understanding of diasporic identity, displacement, and our collective history,” Oshagan explains. “Of particular interest is the use of historical objects and family archives in the conversation around dislocation, borders, and (un)imagined futures.”
Oshagan is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and cultural worker whose practice explores collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence, and identity. He works in photography, film, collage, installation, and public art. Oshagan is an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica and curator at ReflectSpace Gallery in Glendale.
