Barsamian’s installation of the historic death march to Aleppo in the Genocide of the Armenians in the early 1990s is evocative. 

 

Working with writer/poet, Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate, Barsamian asked him to write a poem about this event for his installation.  He also commissioned a soundscape from musician, Uriah Elion. 

 

The Road to Aleppo where families were gone in an instant evocative of any displacement or genocide in history.  Barsamian using sourced images of everyday family life from the time are drawn on lace and stretched on roughhewn tree branches…just like his grandmother and lace makers setting their creations out in the sun to “cure”.  The effect of the lace shadows with each tableau says how fragile memory is and the process of historical forgetting.

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- Vicky Meek