Armenia: A Remembrance   Intaglio Prints by Cynthia Motian McGuirl   April 6 – 28, 2007

Reception to commemorate the 92nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide    April 24, 2007   5-7pm

Elan Gallery  86 Pascal Ave  Rockport, ME 04856      (207) 236-4401    www.elanfinearts.com 

All images hand pulled, drawn & printed by the artist                                                                               Copyright ©2007

17 3/4" x 23 3/4"                                                                        Zinc plate                                                                               Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing   WP: 5 AP: 1 VE: 4 AN:2 Total Impressions: 12

     From a dream: My mother gives me a present.  She is holding a gaseous white ball.   It is composed of spirits with faces and smoky bodies all held together in the shape of a ball.  It is a moving/living thing.  Different spirits move in and out alternately hiding and exposing their naked bodies.  In awe, I ask my mother, "What is this?"  She happily explains that ten days after you are born, your ball of ancestors arrives.  It is a special day.  This is my lineage.  It is a matriarchal line.  Whenever someone is born or dies in our family, their soul arrives from or enters into this ball.

     This dream got me thinking about genetic memory and the importance of my female Armenian ancestors.

7 3/4" x 5 7/8"                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                               Intaglio: hardground, aquatint                                                       WP: 4 CTP: 3 AP: 1 VE: 8 AN:4 II: 3 Total Impressions: 23

     From a dream: I am at an event in the basement of the Armenian church in Providence, RI.  An older woman pulls out a very old book to show me, "The Cugr of the Armenians".  I tell her I have dreams about what happened.  I start crying.  She nods knowingly.  The book has a torn cover.  I say I want to know what happened in Malatya.  By the map in the book, I see that what this book is about is Malatya April 24, 1915.  The first pages of the book are children's drawings.  She tells me the people ate raw bulgur.  I enter the book and see that the vertically scribbled drawing is a huge wheat field.  The people are trying to harvest quickly.  They know that the Turkish soldiers are coming soon.  They have a plan to hide in a cave in the mountains.  To stay hidden, they will have no fires there.  They will have to eat the bulgur raw.  I am moving towards them, but I am still hidden in the tall grains of wheat.  Before I can reach them, the ground shakes with the sounds of soldiers hoof beats.  See "At Malatya" next.                                                

7 3/4" x 5 7/8"                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                               Intaglio: hardground, aquatint                                                       WP: 4 TP: 2 CTP: 3 AP: 1 VE: 8 AN:4 II: 3 Total Impressions: 25

     From a dream: A large group of soldiers rides into the clearing.  Their sabers are drawn.  They quickly slice up all the Armenians.  The souls of the dead Armenians are floating above the chopped up bodies, hovering in shock.  The wheat is soaked in blood.  This is the second, horizontally scribbled children's drawing in the book.  I start breathing hard in fear and begin to run home.  See "Three Dead Boys" next.

7 3/4" x 9 3/4"                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                               Intaglio: hardground, aquatint, chine colle                                     WP: 3 CTP: 1 AP: 1 VE: 6 AN:4 Total Impressions: 14

     From a dream: I am running down a dirt road, and I am in the next "color" photo.  I see very clearly three young boys hung dead on their front porch.  The youngest boy has on a bright blue shirt.  In the distance, I see flames.  I think the Armenian quarter is on fire.  I'm so frightened, I wake up.

     After this dream, I did some research.  I found out that if any Turks were found to be hiding or helping Armenians, the entire family would be hung in front of their house.  Many Armenian quarters were burned.  My mother told me my grandmother said all the Armenian Church records were burned.

6” x 7 1/4”                                                                                  Copper plate                                                                            Intaglio: hardground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing, chine colle    WP: 5  TP: 2  AP: 1  AN: 4  II: 4  Total Impressions: 16

      A vision during a fainting spell as a teenager:  I’m traveling down a long black tunnel.  I feel like the wind.  There is no physical body or thought. I am traveling very fast.  All of the sudden, I realize what is happening.  I come back to consciousness- I do not want to do this.  I slow down.  I slowly go back.  I am beginning to be able to see.  I see a tiny desert.  It gets larger and larger as I move towards it.  It is replacing the black.  I can see myself- or rather my body- lying in the desert.  I am just a speck, but I am getting larger and clearer as I travel closer.  I am very close to my body.  I begin to hear the voices of my friends calling me.  I cannot see them or speak.  I very slowly leave the desert and gradually come to consciousness in my body.  I am very shaky and frightened.

     Looking back on this event, I relate it to the experience of my great grandaunt when she was half dead in the Syrian Desert (see “Morcord’s Melons”).                                                          

11 1/4” x 9”                                                                                  Zinc plates (5)                                                                           Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing    WP: 11  AP: 2  VE: 6  AN: 3  Total Impressions: 2                             

     I was having an ordinary, pleasant dream of a dinner party.  The phone rang, and the hostess said it was for me. I thought, “No one knows I’m here; who could it be?”  It was my great grandaunt Yeksabet.  She said “Don’t forget about us.  We had a deal.  You were going to tell our story.”  I had been neglecting them, and felt a little guilty.

8 1/8” x 6”                                                                                 Copper plate                                                                            Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint                                    WP: 1  CTP: 1  AP: 1  AN: 8  Total Impressions: 11

     Around 1915, my grandmother’s sister, Mariam, was married with a small daughter.  Her husband was among the Armenian men who were rounded up and taken to prison.  Relatives were responsible for bringing food to the prisoners.  Every day at lunchtime, Mariam and her daughter would bring a pail of food and leave it with the guards.  After a period of time spent doing this every day, they discovered that he had never been in prison.  He and the others had immediately been taken to the outskirts of town and murdered.

         The same story is told by my grandfather’s stepbrother.  (My grandfather was already in the USA).  Hagop was a young child when his father was arrested in Malatya.  Every day, he and his mother would take a pail of food and leave it with the guards.  One day, Hagop noticed that the guard threw the pail over the wall, into the river.  By this they knew that Kevork Motian, my great grandfather, was dead.

     Both my grandmother’s and my grandfather’s families were from Malatya, Turkey.  But the families did not know each other before they came to the USA.

5 7/8” x 7 7/8”                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                                  Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, chine colle                  WP: 1  CTP: 3  AP: 5  VE: 14  AN: 6  Total Impressions: 29

     This is part of the story of my grandmother’s sister, Mariam Harpootian.  We called her Morcor, the Armenian word for aunt.  Her husband, depicted floating away, had been taken away by Turkish soldiers in their hometown of Malatya, and killed along with many other Armenian men (see “Pails”).                                              

     Morcor always loved melons. During the “relocation” march, she watched her two year old daughter die because the Turkish soldiers, supposedly accompanying the deportees to protect them, would not let her carry her toddler daughter. When she herself lay dying in the Syrian Desert, a Turkish family, at great risk to their own lives, took her in and nursed her back to health by feeding her melons.

     Over the years since I made this print, I’ve come to see the image of the melons as having a double meaning.  I see it as a feminine symbol of strength: the womb-like outer shape holding in three moons which represent the three stages of a woman’s life.                                                              

9 3/4” x 7 1/2”                                                                            Zinc plate                                                                                Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing, chine colle                                                                                     WP: 8  CTP: 3  AP: 3  AN: 5  II: 7  Total Impressions: 26

       This is how I picture my grandmother’s escape from Malatya, Turkey around 1924.  In 1915, my great grandmother gave two of her daughters to the Turkish family next door so that they could avoid the deportation/genocide.  They lived there for 10 years.  They “pretended” they were Turkish (converted to Islam). They worked as “maids” for the family. This is all that was ever said about those ten long years. Around 1924, my grandmother’s paternal aunt (her “Horkor”) and her son went back into Turkey to rescue my grandmother and her sister.  My grandmother said they escaped in the night on a donkey through tunnels under the city.  They could hear the hoof beats of soldiers’ horses above them.

     I found out later that Malatya is built on an ancient city, and does indeed have tunnels underneath it.  I also discovered that it must have been quite dangerous for my great aunt to go back into Turkey at this time.  Malatya was at civil war, with Kurdish fighters vying for control of the city.                                                         

5 7/8” x 7 3/4”                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                                     Intaglio: hardground, aquatint, liftground, scraping, burnishing    WP: 5  AP: 1  VE: 10  AN: 3  S1: 1  Total Impressions: 20

       From a dream:  I am going through the old trunk which is full of my grandmother’s things.  There is a book that grandma bought from a door to door salesman in 1949.  The book is full of fold out maps.  They are incredibly detailed maps of Malatya and Turkey.  They show the topography, including the towns with streets and houses.  Each house is marked with who lived there.  The place where each person died along the deportation route is also marked.  This documentation is extremely important.                                                             

Merika  VE 4/8  2005

7 3/4” x 5 7/8”                                                                            Zinc plate                                                                                 Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing, chine colle                                                                                     WP: 5  TP: 1  AP: 2  VE: 8  AN: 4  Total Impressions: 20

      Merika was my grandmother’s cousin.  This picture is intriguing.  Why is a child cut out of the negative?  I have heard two different stories.  One is that her family made her give up this child because of prejudice.  The other is that her child and husband were killed in the Genocide.  This print is about the loss of control many Armenian women have had in regards to their children, their bodies, their economic survival and patriarchal abuse.                                                            

Faith  7/12  2005

7 3/4” x 5 7/8”                                                                              Zinc plate                                                                                Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, chine colle                  WP: 3  CTP: 3  AP: 2  VE: 4  AN: 12  II: 4  III: 4  IV: 8              Total Impressions: 40

          This image was inspired by a photograph of my grandmother and her sister taken in 1926 in Aleppo, Syria.  They sent it as a postcard to their aunt whom they were going to join in Cuba.  They lived as refugees in Syria after their escape from Turkey in 1924 (see “The Tunnel”).  I love their modern outfits!  I think the strong visual cross on my grandmother’s dress is appropriately symbolic of her immense Christian faith.  I think that faith is what helped her to survive 10 years as a “maid” to a Muslim family in her hometown of Malatya, Turkey.  Neither woman was able to talk much about what happened during those ten long years.  Both women had nightmares about that time their entire lives- even 50- 60 years after the events.                                                           

Mariam  4/6  2005

7 3/4” x 5 7/8”                                                                            Zinc plate                                                                                       Intaglio: hardground, aquatint, chine colle                                     WP: 3  CTP: 2  AP: 1  AN: 6  II: 4  S1: 4  Total Impressions: 20

      This is a portrait of my grandaunt Mariam Harpootian Sarkisian.  I have tried to capture her beauty, grace, and strength.  After she lost her husband and daughter in the Genocide (see Morcord’s Melons), she went on to be a house mother at an orphanage in Aleppo.  Many Armenian children who had lost their birth parents in the Genocide called her mother.  The photo is from a funeral in Rhode Island in the 1920s.  The dead woman is Mariam’s aunt by marriage.  I believe she died shortly after finally reaching safety in the USA.                                                           

Kaos  II 2/3  2007

8 1/8” x 7 3/4”                                                                        Copper plate                                                                                Intaglio: hardground, crackle ground, aquatint, chine colle            WP: 4  CTP: 1  AP: 1  VE: 5  AN: 3  II: 3  Total Impressions: 17

      This image is a collage of wonderings.  The man is my great grandaunt Yeksabet’s husband.  I think it is her first husband.  It looks like he has chains around his wrists.  It is a very strange backdrop. For some reason, I think he may be a prisoner of war. On a river in Syria, there were so many dead bodies thrown into it that the riverbed changed its course.  There is still evidence today of where the river used to go, and remains of human bones that crumble to dust if they are disturbed.  I suppose the feeding pigs stand for the fact that the world goes on no matter what is happening to you.                                                         

9 3/4” x 7 3/4”                                                                             Zinc plate                                                                                      Intaglio: hardground, softground, aquatint, scraping, burnishing, chine colle                                                                                     WP: 4  CTP: 1  AP: 1  VE: 4  AN: 6  Total Impressions: 16

      The night before my grandmother died, she had a dream.  In the dream, all her dead relatives were calling to her.

Armenia: A Remembrance                                                                                                                                                  Artists Statement   

GEN-O-CIDE  n.  the systematic killing or extermination of a whole people or nation    

     April 24^th is the 92^nd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.  I am commemorating this day with a show of intaglio prints which revolve around my Armenian ancestors.

     The Armenian people have roots that go back to Biblical times in the Middle East.  Under the rule of the Ottomans begun in 1453, the Armenians were a “millet” of the empire. These quasi-independent communities were allowed their own culture and religion but were definitely under the power of the militaristic Ottomans.  In the 1800’s, some Armenians, reacting against prejudice and violence, began to seek political independence.  A series of massacres by the Ottoman government against the Armenian people began around 1894.  These culminated on April 24, 1915 in Constantinople (Istanbul).  800 Armenian leaders, writers and intellectuals were arrested, exiled and almost all were killed.  This was followed by the systematic arrest/conscription of Armenian men around the entire Ottoman Empire.  They were used as slave labor and/or murdered.  Then the Armenian women and children were deported to the Syrian Desert- on foot for hundreds of miles without food, shelter or water. Some Armenians were given a choice: death or conversion to Islam.  Women were kidnapped, raped and forced into marriage with Muslims.  Children were taken into Turkish homes where their fate ranged from slavery to membership in a new family.  Some Armenians were helped by sympathetic Turks.  Most died along the caravan routes, about 1.5 million.

     The Armenian Genocide is, unbelievably, denied by the Turkish government today. Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, who talked openly about the Genocide, was recently assassinated in Istanbul.  Many Turkish writers have been and still are being arrested for writing and speaking about the Armenian genocide.  According to the Turkish Government, the Armenian deaths were just ordinary war casualties.  The Ottoman government was never held accountable for its World War I atrocities.  Because they put their own interests in Middle Eastern resources first, the other governments of the world looked the other way. They continue to look the other way today about past and current events.  I call this greed before human rights. This denial of this first genocide of the 20^th century opened the door to more mass killings.  Adolph Hitler made the decision to attack Poland with the clear order “…to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.  Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”  It is estimated that 119 million people worldwide were the victims of genocide in the 20^th century. (For comparison, 35 million were killed in the combined wars of the century).

     History is taught through generalized accounts of battles, boundaries, dates and numbers.  These words do not change the reality of what happens to people during wartime.  Genocide is a consequence of war.  By learning history through firsthand, personal accounts, we can see the true horrors of war.  Hopefully this awareness will build up to the point where we will not allow it to happen again.

     I do not need some scholar or politician to tell me there was or there was not an Armenian Genocide.  I have my family history which tells the truth.  My ancestors have asked me to share their stories…

Cynthia Motian McGuirl  April 2007