FRESNO — The Fresno State Armenian Studies Program presents “Ara Oshagan: Armenian Diasporic Trajectories-Los Angeles, Beirut, Artsakh, Fresno” – a photographic exhibition tracing diasporic displacement, continuity, and futurity across four interconnected Armenian cities and spaces. The exhibition is the first in a series of events in 2026-2027 marking the 50th anniversary of the Armenian Studies Program.
An opening reception for the exhibition will be held from 4:00-6:00pm on Sunday, September 13, at the University Library (5200 N Barton Ave), Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery, 2nd Floor, Fresno State.
Los Angeles, Beirut, Artsakh, and Fresno are Armenian diasporic spaces connected through a trajectory of displacement, migration, and cultural continuity. Each holds a distinct place in the Armenian experience as well as Oshagan’s history as an artist and diasporan. Los Angeles, Beirut, and Fresno are sites of diasporic life and presence while Artsakh represents an ancestral homeland that has become diasporic overnight. Oshagan’s work documents and explores these spaces, communities, and stories as they persist across generations. They form a fractured trajectory connecting diaspora, belonging, memory, and futurity.
The exhibition will include work from a recently launched collaboration between Oshagan and the Armenian Studies Program that examines the Armenian community’s deep roots in the San Joaquin Valley.
Employing photography, collage, and installation, the exhibit is a palimpsestic vision that intertwines documentary with the speculative, text with image, fact with fiction, ancestral with AI (predictive) technology, and personal with collective history. Oshagan’s own history and identity is entangled in his work as he lives and works among displaced and diasporic communities.
Ara Oshagan is a diasporic multi-disciplinary artist, curator and cultural worker whose practice explores collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence, identity and (un)imagined speculative futures. He works in photography, film, collage, installation, book arts, public art and monuments. Oshagan has published four books of photography and has presented his work at the Annenberg Space for Photography, International Center of Photography in NY and TedX Yerevan. Oshagan is based in Los Angeles, is an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Art Center, a curator at ReflectSpace Gallery in the City of Glendale and the Exhibition Director of the upcoming Armenian American Museum in Glendale.
“Ara Oshagan: Armenian Diasporic Trajectories” entangles past, present, and future while tracing historical continuity and fragmentation in the diaspora and imagining a tomorrow where return to indigenous lands is a possibility.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Armenian Studies Program, the Leon S. Peters Foundation, the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Family Foundation, the Ralph Shabazian Armenian Memorial Fund, and the Florence Elaine Hamparson Armenian Memorial Fund.
Admission is free for the opening reception. Enter campus at Shaw & Maple Aves. There is free parking in Lots P30 or P31, near the University Library.
For more information: https://fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies.
The exhibit will be on display from September 1 to 30, 2026 and is open to the public: Monday-Thursday: 10AM-7:30PM; Friday: 10:00AM-4:30PM; Saturday: 10:00AM-4:00PM
Sunday: Noon-7:30PM.
