Viva Egoyan-Rokeby

Our human identity is created through the precarious balance between our individual experiences and memories, and a collective intergenerational memory. This 

intergenerational consciousness of history is so deeply ingrained into our being that we often overlook it or even question its existence. Growing up in a family that is acutely aware of what we lost in the Armenian Genocide, I see hints of this intergenerational trauma everywhere I look. Through art making I seek to re-establish a connection with the identity that was taken from me through the Genocide and the subsequent sanitization and denial of history. My art is a way for me to come to terms with the horrors of this history and to express my anger towards the denial that continues to prohibit Armenians from healing. Within my pieces I reimagine traditional cultural symbols and objects of nostalgia to express my conflicts, desires and rage. By submerging myself in the intergenerational consciousness l come one step closer to ancestors whose names I will never know and whose stories I will never hear.