Bread may be a common dinner staple for many of us, but it
is a precious symbol of life for Armenian-American artist Apo Torosyan.
In 1964, the young Torosyan took the Oriental Express from Istanbul
to visit his exiled uncle, Sarkis Hagopian, in Sofia,
Bulgaria. On the last day
of the brief reunion, the silver-haired man who survived the Armenian genocide
handed Torosyan a box. The 22-year-old was astounded when he unwrapped the
parting gift on the train. It was a loaf of bread.
“He was giving me life,”
the 65-year-old artist explained, during a phone interview last week from his
home in Boston. Torosyan migrated
to the United States
in 1968.
Bread was used as a weapon by the Turkish oppressors,
Torosyan said. During his entire adult life,
the artist entertained the idea of using
bread as a canvas. He believes no two slices of bread look the same, that each
piece has its own distinct texture and history.
In memory of over 1 million Armenians and Greeks who were
killed from 1915 to 1923, during World War I, the artist created Bread Series/Immigration
Installation, a collection of mixed-media artworks to explore the notion of
oppression and dislocation. In addition to bread, his materials included old
photos, newspapers and mud.
One hundred years later, Armenian genocide is a hotly debated topic.
It is commonly referred to as the first genocide in the 20th century. Armenians
claim Turks systematically annihilated their Christian ancestors during the
reign of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government denies mass
killings took place and instead describes a civil war that resulted in the
deaths of Muslim Turks as well.
The traveling exhibition opened this month at the Florida
Holocaust Museum
in St. Petersburg, Fla.,
and will be on view until Sept. 16. It is part of the museum’s effort to expand
its education efforts beyond the Holocaust to other genocides and human rights
abuses.
Erin M. Blankenship, museum curator, said the artworks are
“good stepping stones” that prepare the public to better understand atrocities,
unlike the realistic images of ghastly murders, mass graves and refugees in
rags in other exhibits.
For many people, the Holocaust is the entrance into the
history of genocide. Most people in the America
don’t know the Armenian genocide precedes it, Blankenship said. Therefore, the
museum is the perfect location for the exhibit.
“When Hitler was planning the extermination of the Jews, he
rhetorically asked whether anyone still remembered what happened to the
Armenians,” she said.
Rubina K. Shaldjian visited the exhibit the first week it
opened. She was moved by the abstract collages of bread pieces painted over
with pictures of Turkish soldiers, and Armenian villages and victims.
“It was almost as if I could see familiar faces and places
in them,” said the 28-year-old descendant of Armenian grandparents. She said
the painting acted “as a catalyst,” and reminded her of the old photos of her
family.
Her great-grandfather escaped death by dressing in a stolen
Turkish soldier’s uniform during the massacre. The family fled, first to Egypt
and then eventually to Canada,
where Shaldjian was born.
Now she’s a law student at Stetson University College of Law
in Gulfport.
The sight of the Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, which lay on top of one of the mud mounds, brought tears
to Shaldjian’s eyes. Agos’ outspoken editor-in-chief, Hrant Dink, was
assassinated by a Turkish extreme nationalist in front of his Istanbul
office on January 19, 2007.
Dink called for the Turkish government to recognize
genocide as a precondition to becoming a member of the European Union. The
crime sparked a public outcry and tens of thousands of mourners gathered at his
funeral, according to press reports.
“So many people in the Tampa
Bay area don’t even know about the
Armenians. Education is crucial,” Shaldjian said.
In a corner of the museum stands a bulletin board. Scattered
about are a series of notebooks and pens. Visitors are invited to share their
stories. Shaldjian wrote out her family’s story and pinned it to the board,
among a half-dozen others.
The museum faxes copies of the stories back to Torosyan. He
was pleased and surprised that so many visitors decide to share their personal
tales.
Torosyan said he found it reassuring to know that his own
family saga as told to him by his father has so much company.
In 1915, Torosyan’s uncle, then 15-year-old Hagopian, was
forced to leave his home with hordes of men from his village. Lined in a single
file, the men were gunned down by the Turkish troops from behind. A missed
bullet flew by the teenager’s ear and he faked dead by lying still in the
killing field, amid piles of dead bodies for three days.
After Torosyan deciding that bread would be his medium, he
gathered loaves of custom-made Italian and Greek bread to create the foundation
for his collages. Chemically petrified for six months, the de-oxygenated bread
is “immortalized.” The painted or toasted bread is pasted together with
newspaper clips and photos. He put burnt
toast into various shapes including a cross, pairs of sandals, or a waning moon. He tied ropes around other chunks and slices,
then covered them with veils to symbolize forbidden food and the wounded.
The everyday objects in the artwork often struck a universal
chord with viewers.
Marilyn Sampson, 55, is a third-grade teacher at Pasco
Elementary School in Dade
City. She related the bread in the
paintings to the bread served at communion in her Pentecostal church.
Fran Squires, teacher at Pine
View School
for the gifted in Osprey, Sarasota,
said the bread collages reminded her of old photos from her childhood.
Meanwhile, Edward Kissi, assistant professor in Africana
Studies at the University of South
Florida, said he was reminded of the genocide in Sudan
when he looked at the pictures.
Sprawling across the exhibition hall are four 12-by-8
pyramids of dark soil. A round loaf of bread wrapped by a newspaper is slapped
atop each mud pile, which resembles a make-shift burial ground. Onlookers often
tip-toe to walk around the mounds, which Torosyan said resemble the obstacles
an immigrant has to overcome in his new life.
To chronicle atrocities long past, Torosyan revisited Turkey
in January and shot three short documentaries of the last survivors. The films
aired on a Turkish television in April and the artist was quickly denounced by
the government. Torosyan said he is “proud to be blacklisted in Turkey”
and pledged to advocate for the redress of Armenian genocide from abroad.
Imparting the message of “peace, not hatred” in his arts,
Torosyan sees himself as a mediator who alleviates the tension between Turkey
and Armenia. “I
don’t hate the Turks. I speak to them too,” he said.
From the killings of the Native Americans to ethnic
cleansing in Rwanda,
Cambodia and
Kosovo, he said, there is no ceiling to atrocities that are committed in the
name of war.
Torosyan hopes his message of reconciliation can transcend
borders.
“This is not only my story, it happened in China,
South American countries and other places. These paintings could have been done
with rice, or potatoes,” he noted. “If the Turks are not punished, other
governments would think they can get away with murders as well.”
