Melik Ohanian, Concrete Tears, 3451, 2006-2012 (detail). Photo: Marc Domage. © Melik Ohanian/ADAGP, Paris (2023).
The Shoah Memorial invites Melik Ohanian to invest the space with a selection of works brought for the first time together into a new dialogue, evoking the history of the Armenian genocide.
Three major installations will be presented in the crypt:
Concrete Tears, 2012
Composed of a mixture of cement and resin, 3451 "concrete tears", like the number of kilometers separating Paris from Yerevan in Armenia, are suspended by steel wires. This work has been redesigned especially for the exhibition.
Streetlights of Memory, 2023
This installation presented in the crypt is a new evocation of the Reverberations of Memory, a memorial work for the public space commissioned to Melik Ohanian by the city of Geneva in 2010 and supported by the Armenian community of Geneva. In 2015, while its installation is contested in Geneva, it is exhibited, under the title Streetlights of Memory – A Stand by Memorial, 2010/2015, in a "dismantled" manner in the Republic of Armenia Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (which will win the Lion d'Or for the best national pavilion). The work was permanently installed in the Trembley Park in Geneva since April 2018 and received the Visarte prize in Zurich in 2019.
Pulp Off, 2014
In March 2014, Janine Altounian, author of the book Memories of the Armenian Genocide — Traumatic Legacy and Analytical Work, informed Melik Ohanian that she wished to buy back the last unsold copies of her book before they are thrown away. The artist then suggested that she acquire some of these copies to produce an artwork. Pulp Off becomes an installation in three stages, giving the book a second life. The artist offers visitors the opportunity to discover an extraordinary testimony (the original of which entered the Manuscript Department of the BnF in 2022) and pushes it out of oblivion.
Alongside those works, a video will be projected on the facade of the Memorial and the documentary MEMORY will be presented by the artist for the first time at the Auditorium, as part of the 2023 edition of the Nuit Blanche.
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