MY RELIC Art Installation on Artsakh Ave. Storefronts

GLENDALE – As part of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Month, emergent international collective of established female artivists, SheLovesCollective, has created an interactive art installation called My Relic. This installation intends to activate our community to transform their relics of genocide into broadly construed creative objects and outlets for the collective mourning of trauma through transformation. My Relic will take place within 3 retail units on Artsakh Ave. (117 Artsakh Ave., 123 Artsakh Ave., and 127 Artsakh Ave.) from April 11-25, 2021, and will feature 3 individual installations including:

· “A Ritual in Bread Making” (117 N. Artsakh Ave.) will invite Armenian bakers and chefs to use Lavash, the traditional Armenian oven baked bread, to create items that make up a typical room in a home. Lavash activates a cultural and biological reality in many Armenians, as food is one of the most important human memories. Abstract bread is often a symbol for hunger, starvation, or a hunger for change. Additionally, a short documentary film will be either projected in large format wall-to wall/ceiling-to-floor or played on a variety of vintage television screens of varying sizes. The short film will be of a healing ritual performed by collective members and footage from two previous performance art documentaries.

· “Relics” (123 N. Artsakh Ave.) will feature 50-yard-long white tapestries suspended from the ceiling that displays digitally printed images of Armenian relics such as ancestral heirlooms, objects that evoke a memory of ancestral struggles, scars and loss, but also, of triumph, survival and photos of a time before. A QR code will allow spectators to scan and learn more about each relic.

· “Reclamation” (127 N. Artsakh Ave.) will feature 100’s of shoes placed in piles as the remnants of a war/bombing with a backdrop of Mount Ararat.

My Relic is generously sponsored by the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission through funding from the Urban Art Program, and support from Glendale Library, Arts & Culture and Glendale Economic Development.

The mission of the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission is to enrich the human experience, reinforce Glendale’s identity and civic pride through arts and culture, and to recognize the importance of arts to our quality of life and to the local economy. This is accomplished by consciously integrating arts and culture into the daily life of the people of Glendale through urban design, planning, economic development, and education. For more information about the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission see the website: https://www.glendaleartsandculture.org/