Sabrina Merolla

The project, still in progress, takes inspiration from some verses by the poet Sylvia Gaboudikian (1919-2006):

 "Perhaps you have become so small, Armenia,
that we could bring you into our hearts (...).
Perhaps this handful of soil has always been destined 
to become a talisman, a lesson and a practice. 
Your name has perhaps become the symbol of purification 
in a world of lies ". 

I am trying to investigate a society that today is constantly described as "still", albeit its history of transitions and hybridizations among different worlds and cultures, that started far before of the Armenian genocide and exile. 

It is a visual journey through stereotypes and revolutions, in a borderland today defined by the constant dialogues and contrasts among the melancholy of its rural landscapes, the memory of the Soviet era and the everyday life of the capital Yerevan, with its new futuristic buildings.
I try to give a tribute to a complex and vital culture that is  too-often forgotten in its richness to give space to the general stereotyped view of "stillness" too often associated to previous Soviet provinces and, in general, to all those places and communities which live out of global capitalism (which is sadly invading and gentrifying the capital Yerevan since few years).

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