The blind spots of memory

Expresses Armenian history: artwork by Talin Gülen Schenk painted on old newspaper

Istanbul. They are dark drawings, charcoal on recycled gray paper. The silhouette of a boy reading a book. He sits on a wall, almost as if at a gate to heaven, alone, removed above the clouds. Another motif shows a man leaving a child behind at a train station. The figures are only silhouettes and yet very concise. A deep loneliness and sadness characterizes the images.

The Armenian-Turkish artist Talin Gülen Schenk made the paper herself. She often uses old issues of the Armenian weekly newspaper Agos. “This is my kind of culture of remembrance,” she says. »This is the newspaper that almost all Armenians in Turkey read. The only one that has us as an issue.”

The newspaper Agos was founded in Istanbul in 1996 and is published bilingually, some pages in Turkish, some in Armenian. The newspaper makes Armenian life public: schools and churches, property issues and cultural heritage, discrimination, but also family stories marked by conflict.

Agos was founded in Istanbul in 1996 and is published bilingually, some pages in Turkish, some in Armenian. The newspaper makes Armenian life public: schools and churches, property issues and cultural heritage, discrimination, but also family stories marked by conflict.

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