I am a Los Angeles-born and San Francisco-raised film/video artist. My work has screened in festivals and institutions throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. My film, YELLOW ARIA, has garnered awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Marin Film Festival. I have received funding from the NEA, Film Arts Foundation, The City of Pasadena's Artist Fellowship and Arpa's Foundation for Armenians in Film, Art and Music.
My video, PINCHED CHEEKS AND SLUR IN A LANGUAGE THAT AVOIDS HER has screened in various venues and schools. This included an art history lecture tour, Aesthetics of Displacement/Displaced Aesthetics by art critic and curator Neery Melkonian. Her lecture dealt with topics related to contemporary artists in the Middle Eastern Diaspora(s).
In my work I explore language, culture, desire, memory, alienation and the relationship between and beyond these themes. Using subtitles, other languages and their translations, I build tension between image, text and silence. In PINCHED CHEEKS I explore the point where language is the site for concealing racial biases. I delve into the paradoxes of these �sites� to evoke deeper questions. In YELLOW ARIA the symptoms of the loss of the loved object revolve around self-expression and desire. I experiment with dialogue synchronization to accentuate this gap where language fails, and in essence film language allows me to bridge this gap. In OYSTER BAR the auto-erotic reverie in French struggles with a pseudo-intellectual voice-over, yet the voice-over cannot permeate the woman's experience. It is the collision of these realities I find interesting.
My work has unfolded to writing, installation and teaching video to youth, as I develop other projects.
A speculated encounter where pointed glances and sucking oysters provide an ambiguous and ironic backdrop. The woman devours her oysters and ignores his language as she explicitly describes her love for the erotic crustacean.
Note: In English and French with subtitles.
1984, 16mm, b&w/so, 6m, $20
YELLOW ARIA is a symptomatic view of the lover at work, constantly on the edge of savoring the moments when passion and neurosis overlap. By layering different forms of expression, the film allows language and action to intertwine to demystify love and passion.
Rather than a sentimental account, YELLOW ARIA is a humorous and ironic series of vignettes which form confessional outbursts of the symptoms of losing the loved object of Desire. With a decidedly female perspective, it simultaneously undercuts and sympathizes with these outbursts to acknowledge that the women have the ability to express this out of balance behavior with beauty and dignity. Baroque pillars fill the frame to create a background for the film. The women orators, statuesque, protrude and extend from this structure while the silent man becomes embedded in the facade. This elevated architecture posits the paradox of YELLOW ARIA: what is ugly about love is also monumental.
Awards: First Prize, Experiments in Form, SF Int'l Film Festival, 1987; Prize Winner, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1988; Honorable Mention, Marin Film Festival, 1987.
Note: In English and Italian with subtitles.
1986, 16mm, color/so, 13m, $40