ANNIE KURKDJIAN
Untitled
Mixed media on board
60 x 70 cm
As a woman, I’m considered to have the capacity to shelter, protect and nourish newborn humanity.
I’m the partner of man in paradise, and his partner in hell. The partner of God in giving birth. I give birth in pain.
As much as I know the secrets of life, I also know how to look at death, how to bury and how to mourn. A woman is a priestess of life and death. She’s the earth, from where children go for life and to where they return when the journey ends.
In my canvases, I give birth to children, I protect them, I watch over them while they sleep, I observe them agonizing, the head on a pillow, I bury them, I mourn.
A canvas is a space of freedom and peace; I choose it as a space for my womanhood.
Born in Lebanon in 1972, Kurkdjian lives and works in Beirut. Through the turbulent years of the Lebanese Civil War, she studied fine arts and psychology at the Lebanese University, and business and theology at St. Joseph’s University. Kurkdjian has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Gallery Sader, UNESCO, Salon Sursock, Royal School of Arts in London, and Biennale Arts Hors Normes in Lyon, amongst several others.
Since 2005, she has held solo exhibitions at the Goethe Institut (2005), Centre Culturel Français (2006), Surface Libre (2007), Zico House (2008), Atelier 109 (2010), and éspace Bertin Poirée (2012). Annie Kurkdjian’s work won the “Johayna Baddoura Prize” in 2012 and has been showcased in Art Dubai and Menasa Art Fair in Beirut in 2013.