A White Night with Melik Ohanian

The proposal revolves around three major works, a documentary and an external projection, to pay tribute to the memory of those, lost or wounded, in this tragic moment of History.

ON THE MEMORIAL’S FACADE

REMEMBER, IT WAS TOMORROW –

On the main facade of the Shoah Memorial, a video animation made from the title of the exhibition, enigmatic like an oxymoron, and its translation into Armenian, calls upon passersby and invites them to enter the crypt for a moment to discover the works of Melik Ohanian.

IN THE CRYPT

CONCRETE TEARS — 3451 – 2012

3451 tears of concrete and lead. Work temporarily adapted for the crypt of the Shoah Memorial. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Composed of a mixture of cement and resin, 3451 «concrete tears», like so many kilometers separating Paris from Erevan in Armenia, are suspended thanks to steel wires, diaphanous rain curtain falling over the black marble Star of David. Runoff or flight, the work from the skylight under the bronze cylinder of the forecourt, creates a vibratory link in space, a spiritual and almost telluric bond, between these monuments of memory, between the memories of genocides, between the lands of asylum and exile. Through the paradoxical image of concrete tears, Concrete Tears, aerial and dense, materializes emotion, and the drama from which it emanates, and becomes the place of a "passage from emotion to consciousness"*

*(Based on an interview with Garance Malivel.)

PULP OFF – 2014

120 copies of the original edition of the book Memories of the Armenian Genocide by Janine Altounian and Varham Altounian (PUF, 2009), shredded. 24 facsimile reproductions of the Deportation Journal by Vahram Altounian (1920-1921). Touch screen and digitized book. Collection du MacVal, Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val de Marne – Inv. No.: 2019- 2370 (1-26)

In March 2014, Janine Altounian, author of the book Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide — Traumatic legacy and analytical work, informs Melik Ohanian that she wishes to buy the last unsold copies of her work before they are sent for sale. The artist then offers to acquire a part of these copies to make a work of art. Pulp Off becomes a three-phase installation, giving the book a second life. Paradoxically, by breaking it down, he reinvents its value. It invites to perpetuate this testimony and its analysis as a constitutive element of the identity of a people. With Pulp Off, Melik Ohanian offers visitors the opportunity to discover an extraordinary testimony (the original of which entered the BnF’s Department of Manuscripts in 2022) and pushes it out of oblivion.

STREETLIGHTS OF MEMORY — WOOD MOLDS – 2023

About ten elements used to create the Réverbères de la Mémoire, a permanent work installed in Parc Trembley in Geneva in 2018. Les Réverbères de la Mémoire (2010-2018) was produced by the Armenia Foundation, Geneva and FMAC, City of Geneva.

The installation presented in the crypt is an unpublished evocation of the Réverbères de la Mémoire, a memorial work commissioned for public space that was created in Melik Ohanian by the city of Geneva in 2010 and supported by the Armenian community of Geneva. It was permanently installed in 2018 after several years of controversies and struggles related to the historical fact on which it is based.

This work will have experienced a 'double state'. In 2015, while its implementation is contested in Geneva, it is exhibited, under the title Streetlights of Memory – A Stand by Memorial, 2010/2015, in a way «dismantled» in the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 56th Venice Biennale (who will win the Golden Lion for the best national flag). The work finally finds its place in the Trembley Park of Geneva and is inaugurated in April 2018. She receives in 2019 the Visarte Prize in Zurich.

AT THE EDMOND J. SAFRA AUDITORIUM

MEMORY – 2023

Sequences of a documentary film being edited, directed by Melik Ohanian. 50mn, 2010-2023. Images Vartan Ohanian. Production Melik Ohanian Studio.

« The progression of the project and the oppositions encountered are an integral part of the work. In a similar way, this journey replays what the Armenians underwent during and after the genocide. All this political and legal controversy around the project gives the work its own reality and its own life" – Melik Ohanian

Questioning the multiple meanings of the memorial, the documentary film MEMORY follows the production and installation of the Réverbères de la Mémoire (2010-2018) in Geneva. Broadcast for the first time and in an unfinished form on the occasion of this exhibition, it traces, in a series of rushes and sequences, the complex genesis of this controversial work, which had been commissioned to the artist by the City of Geneva in 2010 as a tribute to the Armenians and the Swiss who mobilized on their behalf from the first massacres.

1st session at 6:30 PM, presented by Melik Ohanian

Then projection of the film continuously until 2am, night from June 3 to 4, 2023

______

Melik Ohanian

MELIK OHANIAN

Born in 1969 in Lyon, Melik Ohanian is a French artist, visual artist and videographer, living between Paris, Issoudun and Armenia, within the framework of his permanent project Datcha Project – Zone of No Production, initiated in 2005.

Although not all of Melik Ohanian’s work is devoted to it, a part of his artistic corpus strongly and emotionally invests the memory and history of the genocide of the Armenians. It therefore also produces a broader reflection on the concepts of territories, physical and conceptual, articulated around the question of time, integrating historical, political or ideological dimensions. Nourished as much by science as by philosophy, his work develops through a multiplicity of mediums, questioning the modes of representation of the exhibition and often going beyond the usual frames of the image in its spatial and temporal dimensions.

His work has won several awards, including the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2015, the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion as part of the collective exhibition of the Armenian Pavilion at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2015, and the Visarte Prize in 2019.

The Shoah Memorial thanks for their valuable collaboration:

Melik Ohanian

CHD Art Maker

The Chantal Crousel Gallery, Paris

La Galerie Dvir, Paris, Brussels, Tel Aviv

Le MacVal, Contemporary Art Museum of the Val de Marne

Melik Ohanian thanks:

Janine Altounian, Sona Khachikyan, Vartan Ohanian, Michèle Freiburghaus,

FMAC City of Geneva, Vahé Gabrache and the Armenia Foundation.

ALL THE LEGENDARY PHOTOS

Cover – Melik Ohanian, Remember It Was Tomorrow, 2023 © Melik Ohanian ADAGP, Paris 2023

CONCRETE TEARS — 3451 – 2012 – Photo: Marc Domage © Melik Ohanian ADAGP, Paris 2023

PULP OFF – 2014 – Collection of the MacVal, Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val de Marne – Inv. No.: 2019- 2370 (1-26) © Melik Ohanian ADAGP, Paris 2023

STREETLIGHTS OF MEMORY — WOOD MOLDS – 2023 © Melik Ohanian ADAGP, Paris 2023

STREETLIGHTS OF MEMORY – A STAND BY MEMORIAL, 2010/2015 © Melik Ohanian ADAGP, Paris 2023