Veronika Babayan uses an auto-ethnographic approach in the adaptation of early feminist practices of preservation in relation to the concepts of collective memory, intergenerational trauma and diasporic identity. A large part of her work revolves around fruit leather making - a recipe through which stories of deracination, migration and survival of the Armenian women have been passed on intergenerationally and transnationally. In this light, Babayan is instrumentalising the recipe into a collective political subjectivity, a mnemonic device, and a transmission vessel of oral histories. In doing so, her work depicts the brutal and visceral characteristics of seemingly fragile materials that represent both nurturance and resistance.
Sour Counterfeits - Multimedia installation, Het Hem / De Dood, Zaandam, 2020.
"Sour Counterfeits" is a mobile forgery lab, where fruit leather documents are produced. In this multiphase project, Armenian women's generational knowledge of fruit leather making is transformed into a mnemonic device for cultural preservation. This work pulls from a larger collective memory, serving as a vessel through which deracinated testimonials of trans-generational trauma circulate beyond territory, language and citizenship.
Video: Mikaela Lakova.
Sour Counterfeits - Multimedia installation, W139, Amsterdam, 2021.
Photo: Jeroen de Smalen
Dear Mother; Fluid Mechanism of Belonging - Taking the form of a passport, this publication is a meta-autobiographical investigation of the concept of collective trauma and motherhood. How does maternal care and nurturance affect a child’s diasporic identity formation? What are the ways in which we can allow future generations to devictimise the transnational identity and to create a new, fluid mechanism of belonging?
Photo: Maarten Boswijk
The Children Who Eat Sunflower Seeds - Video essay, 24"00 min, 2020
Realms of Postmemory - Multimedia installation, Modern Art Museum, Yerevan, 2021.
“Postmemory”, a term first coined by Marianne Hirsch in the early 1990’s, describes the relationship that the generation after bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to experiences they remember only by means of the stories, images, and behaviours among which they grew up. The connection to the past that is defined as postmemory is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present. This work was part of the joint international ecofeminist exhibition "Մայրենիք" / "Motherland" in collaboration with the artists Olga Ganzha, Tatevik Ghukasyan and masharu.
Realms of Postmemory - Installation detail: laser engraving on fruit leather
Realms of Postmemory - Video, 10"15, 2021.
Banner #1 and #2 - Series of fruit leather banners (2/3) commissioned for "Warmly", Huidenclub, 2023.
As referred to in the title ‘Warmly’, the attention of this showcase is directed towards the ways in which each artist uses heating, drying and cooking to transform organic matter. Process oriented practice is the focal point and is approached through the lens of ecofeminism.
Photo: Michele Margot
Banner #3 - Series of fruit leather banners (3/3) commissioned for "Warmly", Huidenclub, 2023.
Words of Endearment and Solidarity - Fruit leather words of endearment and solidarity in Armenian, Arabic and Farsi, created for the event "Resistance at Boiling Point", fourth edition of the "Tongue Twisting Dinner" series organised by Eathouse Collective, 2023.
Photo: Vlada Predelina
