It is not common to organize in a private Gallery an International Exhibition, even more about such a significant matter : 100 years since the Armenian Genocide, hence I am honored to salute with these few words this cultural event. The 20th century, the century of modernism, the era that had the courage to announce the death of God and the resurrection of the Human, the era that espoused the constant progress and dreamt, through the art movements, the unnegotiable human ability for happiness through a teleology dressed up with a scientific mantle, started a hideous genocide, the Armenian’s one, it continued with a more terrible one, the Holocaust and ended completely ominously within a series of local wars that had though a global effect. The Armenian Genocide was followed by the Genocide of the Pontius, the Genocide of the Caucasus population cause of Stalinism and after the B’ World War was Ruanda, Cambodia, the civil war of ex Yugoslavia etc. The century of the Modernism was unfortunately meant to be the century of the Genocides, the era of blood and of explicit violence.
With the present exhibition, seven Armenian artists that live in Greece and five deputies of the Armenian Diaspora around the world, exhibit artworks that are inspired by the dreadful tragedy of 1915, expressing a wish from the bottom of the heart; First of all, for this sacrifice not to be forgotten. Not for reasons of retaliation and revanchism but for reasons of historical memory and awareness. Secondly, because the blood never gets washed away with blood, but only with achievements and ideas that transcend it. Art, has always been, is and always will be the strongest, the most effective weapon in the battle for peace.
The exhibited artworks are on the one hand loaded with emotion but on the other hand they do not seek to impress easily. They aim at the self-examination and the lucid thought. It is like they are saying; Never again.
P.S. My friend Gagik says; “Nobody forgets, nothing is forgotten”. In the end that is the purpose of History. The Last chance of people for the justice and the happiness they deserve.
