Mekhitar Garabedian
Alep (Bronze Lamp)
2025
€265,00
Offset print on 115gr Blueback paper
59,4 x 84,1 cm
Edition of 15 copies, signed & numbered by the artist
In stock
about this work
Mekhitar Garabedian’s Alep (Bronze Lamp) features a Syrian stamp depicting a bronze lamp shaped like a horse, overlaid with “par avion,” “Alep” (in both French and Arabic), and the date 27.08.81. This date marks a personal history—Garabedian was born in Aleppo and emigrated with his family to Belgium in 1981. The stamp comes from a letter sent to his father in Antwerp, where the family lived during their first year in Belgium. Part of a series issued in Syria in the late seventies, the stamp depicts heritage objects from National Museums. Garabedian alters the image, making it feel distant and unreal. By inverting the colours of the original stamp, he removes it from view, emphasising its inaccessibility—just like aspects of the past that remain out of reach, preserved yet transformed by time and memory.
This edition is the very same print you can see pasted in public space as part of our PLAKT series. We saved 15 pristine copies to present as a limited edition – signed and numbered by the artist.
about Mekhitar Garabedian
Mekhitar Garabedian’s work explores identity through the lens of migration, displacement, and cultural hybridity. Deploying diverse media such as drawing, video, photography, and installations, many of his works draw from his experience as an immigrant and play on the poetic qualities he finds between languages, cultures, and histories. Just as his personal diasporic history is layered, his work resonates with a multiplicity of references to literature, music, philosophy, and visual arts. Through these references, he constructs a complex narrative on identity—one that is fluid, evolving, and shaped by both personal memory and collective heritage.
Born in Aleppo (Syria) into an Armenian family that had already experienced displacement due to the Armenian genocide, Garabedian later migrated to Belgium with his parents. This movement between geographies and histories informs his practice, as he navigates themes of belonging, nostalgia, and the fragmented nature of cultural identity. His work often incorporates the Armenian language, historical photographs, and written texts, using them as tools to both preserve and reinterpret a past that is simultaneously personal and collective. In doing so, he highlights the ways in which identity is not singular or fixed but rather a constant negotiation between inherited traditions and contemporary realities.
Garabedian’s work also engages with broader questions of cultural translation and adaptation. By layering personal narratives with philosophical and artistic references, he challenges fixed notions of origin and belonging. His approach reflects the experience of the diaspora—one where home is not a singular place but a constellation of memories, languages, and influences. Through his art, Garabedian creates spaces where multiple identities can coexist, offering a reflection on how history, displacement, and creativity intertwine in the ongoing process of self-definition.
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