Author: Boshkezenian Garik

ANCA continues campaign to expand aid to Artsakh in face of ongoing Azerbaijani threats

WASHINGTON—The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations has called for $60 million in U.S. aid to Armenia, $2 million for Artsakh de-mining, and a special report by the State Department and US Agency for International Development to identify humanitarian needs in the aftermath of the 2020 Artsakh war as part of the Fiscal Year 2023 foreign aid bill, reported the Armenian National Committee of America.

“The ANCA would like to thank Chairwoman Barbara Lee for her leadership in increasing aid to Armenia, maintaining Artsakh demining assistance, and – notably – for calling for a long-overdue needs assessment following Turkey and Azerbaijan’s attacks on Artsakh and Armenia in 2020,” stated ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.  “As the House and Senate continue marking up the FY2023 foreign aid measure, we look forward to working with key legislators to expand aid to Artsakh in the face of ongoing Azerbaijani aggression.”

The ANCA is continuing its nationwide campaign to secure $50 million in U.S. aid to Artsakh / $100 million for Armenia through its online portal – anca.org/aid

In the report accompanying the proposed FY2023 foreign aid bill, House appropriators urged the $60 million in funds for Armenia to support “economic development, private sector productivity, energy independence, democracy and the rule of law, and other purposes.”  With regard to Artsakh, the report notes, “the Committee remains concerned about the humanitarian impact of the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh and resulting challenges in the areas of housing, food security, water and sanitation, health care, and other human needs.”  Within 60 days of the enactment of the measure, the Secretary of State and USAID Administrator are asked to “develop and submit to the Committees on Appropriations an assistance strategy for addressing humanitarian and recovery needs arising from the conflict. The strategy shall identify resources and programs available to address the ongoing crisis, along with an estimate of resources available for such purpose.”  The Committee report also includes a recommendation of “not less than $2,000,000 for de-mining activities in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

With regard to Turkey, House appropriators, once again, urged that aid be withheld from President Erdogan’s bodyguards – the Turkish Presidential Protection Directorate (TPPD) – unless those indicted as a result of the July 17, 2017, brutal beating of peaceful protesters in Washington, DC are brought to justice.

The full House Appropriations Committee is expected to adopt the proposed FY2023 foreign aid bill this week.  In the run-up to full House consideration of the measure, Hamparian and ANCA Government Affairs Director Tereza Yerimyan have led over 50 meetings with Congressional offices echoing community concerns about Artsakh’s and Armenia’s safety and security, the need to zero-out military aid to Azerbaijan, and to send $50 million in U.S. aid to Artsakh and $100 million to Armenia.  They have been accompanied by the 2022 ANCA Leo Sarkisian, Maral Melkonian Avetisyan, and Hovig Apo Saghdejian Capital Gateway Program interns and fellows.

The U.S. Senate is set to take up foreign aid bill in the upcoming month.

LOS ANGELES—Tufenkian Fine Arts announced “Dreams in Deixis,” a group exhibition curated by Ava Burnes featuring artworks by Claire Chambless, Sessa Englund, Lara Joy Evans, Rosemary Holliday Hall, Isabella Kressin, Amelia Lockwood, Carlotta Lücke, and Kira Scerbin. The exhibition will be on view from July 15 through August 20, with an opening reception to be held on Friday, July 15 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.  

The title of this exhibition takes inspiration from the theory of Deixis am Phantasma, which translates “to point at an empty space (or to the ghost).” Through a spectrum of idioms and lexicons, from folkloric mysticism and religious symbology to the metamorphosis and organization of natural and architectural forms, the artists in “Dreams in Deixis” re-examine the interpretations of femininity, identity, and the human experience. 

The sculptural objects of Claire Chambless are architecturally reimagined to create escape routes, preventing both containment or access for the physical body and psychic self. Chambless’ cultural symbols function as signs of physical/ideological containment, enclosure, or apparatuses of support for the physical body/psychic self. Rosemary Holliday Hall’s “Enclyclia imagosis” embraces the physical process of metamorphosis as a means of investigation in which we make sense of the world and relate to ourselves and others through imagination, metaphor, and material. Similarly, Isabella Kressin is interested in the process of metamorphosis and how it relates to the body and its immaterial forms. Her photographic and sculptural works are intimate, and draw on themes found in mythology, as well as memories of her adolescence with an emphasis on the female body, portraying it in various states of nudity, relief, ecstasy, and joy.

In addition to employing a broad range of material and conceptual approaches to their practice as a means of addressing socio-cultural ideals, expectations, constructs, and perceptions, the artists materialize their fears and desires by bridging the tangible world of reality with fantasy. The mud spires of Laura Joy Evans evoke termite mounds or stalagmites and delve into notions of techno-primitivism, religious symbology in nature, the digital dark age, and its implications on the collective conscious. Kira Scerbin’s humanoids are meditations on having a body and existing in a physical world that is built upon perverse and primal urges. These creatures, with their disquieting glares and unearthly presence, relate her interest in the perspicacity of strangeness. Enlisting inanimate objects as stand-ins for implied bodies, Sessa Englund’s work emphasizes the exchange between aggression and vulnerability; otherness and familiarity; expectations and failure. Her work blends a variety of references — from Northern European folklore to piercings and troll dolls — grounded in cultural semiotics: an exploration of the meanings we assign to materials and processes.

Amelia Lockwood’s artworks trace connections from geological formations, esoteric map systems, and the constructs of modern-day board games. The overlapping aesthetics of both create structures in which the mind and body are aligned towards achieving a resolution through navigational strategies. Lockwood’s practice aims to highlight both the utilitarian nature of ceramics and the cultivation of the human spirit. Carlotta Lücke’s practice centers on the illusion of authenticity and the representation of collected personal and shared experiences. Lücke’s silicon composites cull together cultural references, collective stories, and shared experiences that appear spontaneous and arbitrary, but are highly composed compositions where everyday tropes are collected, sampled, and reworked over time.   

Employing a broad array of styles and iconography, the artists in “Dreams in Deixis” use a variety of abstract vernaculars to meditate on the aesthetics of femininity, fantasy, and mythology. The images, objects, and forms brought together in this exhibition challenge our fabrications of identity and explore tensions between the intelligible and fantastical, raw and refined, primitive and contemporary.