Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories
2017-2019
Around 150 images, various formats of images, prints and frames.
Photographic emulsion on stones (tuf, black obsidian, red obsidian, volcanic glass)
Family archive pictures of the artist.
With the support of Armenian Art Foundation and ACSL residency.
Around 150 images, various formats of images, prints and frames.
Photographic emulsion on stones (tuf, black obsidian, red obsidian, volcanic glass)
Family archive pictures of the artist.
With the support of Armenian Art Foundation and ACSL residency.
For Dame Gulizar and
Other Love Stories, Rebecca Topakian’s starting point is the unique story
of her Armenian family, who lived in Turkey before her grandfather emigrated to
France. This story is the love of
her great-grandparents – Garabed and Gulizar –forbidden by their parents, until
the kidnapping of Gulizar by Garabed, who came for her on his horse to take her
to Constantinople.
Topakian explored this part of her identity by choosing fiction and mythology.
Bearing the love story of her ancestors in mind while she traveled and lived in
Armenia, desire became the thread of this work: it is a desire for earth,
ground, identity, but also for the other’s body acting almost as a mirror. She
borrows from many photographic styles and mixes them with her own family
archives. She also prints her family pictures in the darkroom directly on the
surface of local stones that she found while walking in the Armenian mountains.
She thus offers an intimate and impressionistic portrait of Armenia.
︎︎︎ Back to Dame Gulizar
︎︎︎ Dame Gulizar stones
︎︎︎ Dame Gulizar installation





















































