Mekhitar Garabedian

Your origins and family history follow you wherever you go, as artist Mekhitar Garabedian knows only too well. He lived in Syria and Lebanon before moving to Belgium as a child. He lives and works in Ghent. His family fled the Armenian genocide 100 years ago. Garabedian’s family history and migrant origins inspire him in his work. He uses them as a starting point to explore how identity develops in a society which has been and still is increasingly shaped by migration. With sound, neon, photography, text, video and in publications the artist shows us that identity is always in a state of flux. He likes to quote the French poet Arthur Rimbaud: “Je est un autre.” – “I is someone else”, an expression that applies to everyone and particularly to the migrant. Mekhitar Garabedian is a researcher and guest professor on the Installation and Media Art programme at the KASK/School of Arts Ghent.

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