Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account in Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review
“Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account in Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review“
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018
This essay addresses the omission of Armenian artists from the inaugural “Glendale Biennial,” against the backdrop of inequitable development and escalating economic violence in Glendale, CA—an exclusion that proceeded despite the fact that the city’s Armenian diaspora constitutes approximately 40% of its overall population. Extending beyond the parameters of visual cultural analysis, the essay incorporates autoethnographic, performative narratives that bridge critical curatorial studies, diaspora studies, and anti-displacement activism.
Attending to the histories of Armenian diasporic communities in Los Angeles and to the role of art as a gentrifying agent, the essay asks: Whose visions of the valley do we get to see? Whose are withheld? Who decides?
This essay was included in:
Los Angeles Times‘s “Essential Arts” List
ARTNews‘s “Morning Links”
Hyperallergic‘s “Required Reading”