NEW PUBLICATION — “displaced”: Diaspora and Diasporic Return by Ara Oshagan

FRESNO — Ara Oshagan will present his new book in a talk, “‘displaced’: Diaspora and Diasporic Return” at 7:00PM on Friday, February 13, 2026, in the Grosse Industrial Technology Building, Room 101 (2255 E. Barstow Ave.) on the Fresno State campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Oshagan will present photographs from his recently published photographic book ‘displaced’ – a work about diasporic memory, multi-generational displacement, and the ambiguities of narrative.

Oshagan, whose grandparents survived the Armenian Catastrophe of 1915 and whose parents were themselves born in Diaspora, was born and grew up in the Armenian diasporic community of Beirut. He was himself displaced as a child during the Civil War and came of age in the United States.

With displaced, Oshagan returns to Beirut carrying this history and wades into the spaces of his community and childhood to photograph neighborhoods fraught with their own generational legacies of displacement, war, and fierce independence. Centered on the dense Armenian district of Bourj Hammoud, the work is simultaneously personal and collective.

displaced is the third canto in a trilogy by Oshagan set in Los Angeles, Artsakh/Armenia, and Beirut. displaced is published by Kehrer Verlag in Germany and is a collaboration with author Krikor Beledian whose text is translated by Taline Voskeritchian and Chris Millis.

Oshagan is a diasporic trans-disciplinary artist and curator whose practice explores collective and personal histories of displacement, legacies of violence, identity, and (un)imagined futures. Oshagan works in photography, collage, installation, film, archives, book arts, public art and monuments and has published four books of photography. He has had solo exhibitions and public art installations in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Armenia, Morocco, and South Korea. His work has been featured on NPR, the LA Times, Hyperallergic, Mother Jones, and Art Papers among others. Oshagan is an Artist-in-Residence at the 18^th Street Art Center in Santa Monica and curator at the City of Glendale.

Free parking is available in Fresno State Lot P23, near the Industrial Technology building. Parking permits are not required for Friday night lectures.

The presentation will also be live-streamed on YouTube at: https://bit.ly/armenianstudiesyoutube.