SAN FRANCISCO — “Live by Loving,” an exhibition by Armenian artist Zaven Khachikyan, will appear at the Lightspace Gallery of the International Art Museum of America (IAMA) in San Francisco from November 16 to 23, with its opening reception on Sunday, November 16 from 3-5 p.m. The exhibition is organized by the Golden Gate Armenian Film Festival (San Francisco) with the generous support of the Strobia Foundation.
Khachikyan’s work explores compassion, resilience, and the power of empathy in times of displacement. Through an evocative blend of photography and fabric, he reflects on the lives of families displaced from Artsakh after the 2020 war. Each piece intertwines the intimacy of personal archives, family photographs, fragments of carpets, and traces of domestic life, with artistic reinterpretation, inviting visitors to witness the endurance of humanity amid loss.
“Live by Loving” reminds us that even within fractured homes, love and warmth endure. The artist calls upon us to take part in this act of empathy, to live by loving.
The exhibition is based on the idea of humanitarian support for the displaced people of Artsakh resettled in Armenia because of the 2020 war. The presence of a piece of carpet and family photos on the walls of their half-empty, uninviting, and half-destroyed dwellings were bright rays of hope for survival – a call to empathize with people, an imperative to review my archives, and to respond as an artist. The only artistic imperative is the following message: let’s bring love and warmth to those hearts; let’s live by loving.
One of the aims of the exhibition is to reveal the multidisciplinary connections between various fields – cinema, photography, literature and ethnography – thus emphasizing the idea that photography can transform from a simple document into a literary image, a symbol of collective memory.
It’s worth noting that art, beyond its abstract-general nature, is also quite concrete: it has а time and а place. The exhibition will feature photographs that require historical analysis.
