Arménie le voyage fantasmé Art book

Travel book and family origins exploration. THE ORIGIN OF THE PROJECT: I went to Armenia to exhibit at the Yerevan Tumanian Museum illustrations I made for the collection of poems Mon Ami Toumanian (Sigest publisher). In my suitcase I had taken my sketchbook and my painting box of that always accompany me. I was going to Armenia for the first time, I was impatient and moved, so I thought of creating a book to mark the event. I have drawn many religious and cultural places, churches, monasteries, museum interiors, as well as street and coffee places views, all those images make up the first part of the book. When I returned to France, I wanted to continue the journey, and to go back to my father side granparents origins who were born in Caesarea of Cappadocia, in Western Armenia. I had little information about their life in Anatolia, a few bits of stories that Yevkin my dear aunt had told me, I had photos of their engagement, so it was by looking at old pictures that I tried to figure out the atmosphere that surrounded the life of Armenians before the genocide. I was inspired by classical paintings, representations of the Ottoman Empire Armenians in Orientalist painting and in studio photography. My grandfather Garabed was born in 1910, my grandparents and their own parents could have been the subject of Orientalist paintings and etchings. For the second part of the book I painted a lot from those classical references. Drawing inspiration from these images was a bit of an attempt to find the members of this disappeared community. The sometimes very stereotypical scenes of these orientalist images moves me a lot because of their beauty and also because they contain the imminent disappearance of what they represent, a bygone world. I let myself go and represent everything that inspired and moved me, a costume, a hat, the angle of view of a room... Finally, the last part of the book is like a return to the present, I present drawings and paintings made from family heirlooms, photographs, rugs... which I keep as treasures. All the images of this book are like the elements of a reverie. I hope that you will enjoy reading the book, as much as I have enjoyed painting and writing it, that the book will make you dream and travel. I would like it to make you want to go to Armenia to see with your eyes what I have represented with my brushes, to make you think of your ancestors wherever they come from, and to cherish your family heirlooms. After the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenians were blockaded there for several months by the Azerbaijani government, followed by ethnic and religious cleansing in the fall of 2023. They were forced to flee, and to empty their ancestral lands in a few days. Today, it is the survival of the entire country that is threatened, the continuation of the genocide of 1915 that is at work, and the images in my book are also a declaration of love to this country, a tribute to the self-determination and dignity of its people. The book is a tribute to my ancestors, to the victims of 1915 and today. WHAT IS THE BOOK MADE OF? It consists of 300 paintings and drawings, accompanied by typed and handwritten texts. Fot this first book run the texts are in french. I have divided it into three parts, a text opens each chapter entry, and other smaller texts or captions taken by hand punctuate the drawings and give a feeling of intimacy to the whole, a feeling of proximity with the artist. For each new day of visit to Armenia, I drew the map of the country or the capital in watercolor and I located the site I visited. This first part of the book can be used as a traveller guide. I used several artwork techniques to make the images. There are black and white drawings made in ink, colored pencil drawings, gouache paintings, oil and tempera paintings. Many drawings and watercolors were made on the spot, from life, in Armenia I sat near a monastery, in the garden of a church, in a café in Yerevan with my sketchbook and pencils. Other drawings and paintings were made on the return from the trip to the studio, on loose sheets or canvas, by looking at photographies, by recomposing them. In Yerevan, among the various places drawn, you can discover the following sites: The Republic square, the Martiros Sarian museum, the Toumanian museum, Dzidzernagapert Genocide memorial, the Serguei Paradjanov house museum, Matenadaran, and streets and coffee places views. Outside the capital I drew the Garni Temple, the Monasteries of Geghard, Noravank, Khor Virap, Goshavank, Aghartsin, Sevanavank, Etchmiadzin, Gayane and Hripsime churches, Dilijan... THE ARTIST I was born in France, from a French father of Armenian origin, and a Sephardic mother, born in Oran. After a Master's degree in Art History on the Surrealist movement, I graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. I learned the art of Persian miniatures from Master Abbas Moayeri in parallel of my artistic studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. I have illustrated several texts for adult and children book publishing houses. In 2008, I was awarded the Saint-Exupéry Prize for Le Prince Tisserand album, (Le Sorbier publisher)I illustrated with Persian miniatures inspired paintings. In 2005, I received the Pierre David-Weill Drawing Prize from Académie desBeaux-Arts, Institut de France. I work on figurative painting in at the same time as Indo persian miniature painting. I would like to thank Jean Varoujan Sirapian who guided me to Armenia, Véronique Boudon for the work on the first versions of the book models, Myriam Fathia for the first english versions corrections, Gauthier Delauné, Christine Gardon and Anne-Laure Janvier for their adaptability for this campaign. And thank you to all of you who pass by this page, walkers, curious people, friends, family for your interest in reading me. THANK YOU! Photography © Jean Sirapian

Gauthier Delauné also known as Miroundello Studio will work on the graphic design of the book, the printing of the book will be carried out by the historical Imprimerie Roques, finally the printing of art prints in limited editions of your contributions will be made by Atelier80 with whom I have been collaborating for several years. Some of the photographs of the works that make up the book were taken by Raphaele Kriegel from Photographe d'oeuvre d'art and Véronique Boudon. Anne-Laure Janvier also known as Des étoiles et des yeux made the video for this book campaign.