I am working on a long-term painting project based on Albert Camus’s Exile and the Kingdom, which is a book of six short stories that broadly explore themes around alienation and identification. Ultimately, Camus’s protagonists willingly subject themselves to the laws laid down by a ‘tribe’ within their given environment – and despite the apparent alternatives, they each choose to remain with what is familiar and/or common to their community.
These themes are of particular interest to me because they coincide with considerations about man’s physical presence or absence, and how they may be depicted in space, which is all quite central to my compositions in painting. Of course, there is also a strong correlation here with the much broader questions of life, such as why we are here, or what does our presence mean, if anything? Given my Armenian roots, perhaps these questions seem even more pertinent, since the historical challenges of many Armenians, especially over the past 100 years has been characterized by displacement, alienation and having to re-integrate into foreign lands and cultures.