Hyusnunts and friends: Armen Hyusnunts (saxophones), Artashes Kartalyan (keyboards), Levon Simonyan (guitar), Vik Momjian (bass guitar), & Arman Jalalyan (drums)
Songs without words
Tuesday, March 11, 2025 from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Tickets: $50
For tickets www.ArmenianArts.com & Info – Please call 747-208-2000
Join the Center for Armenian Arts for an evening of documentary and experimental short films that straddle the layered and overlapping spaces between image, identity and language. The five filmmaker/artists—Carla Kekejian, Mariam Meliksetyan, Ara Oshagan, Gazelle Samizay and Anahid Yahjian—tackle diverse themes from multiple perspectives as they meditate on what is a name, return to diasporic language, walk in spaces of incarceration, consider memory on indigenous land and reflect on a hidden language. All works are interconnected and retain a deep-lying coherence as the filmmakers/artists look to the future to imagine new ways of being and thinking.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers/artists.
Carla Kekejian – Harsneren, 16 mins, 2019
Mariam Meliksetyan – Say My Name, 21 mins, 2024
Ara Oshagan – but for the happenstance of history II, 4 mins, 2020
Gazelle Samizay — My Shadow is a Word Writing Itself Across Time, 6 mins, 2017
Anahid Yahjian – Hishé, 5 mins, 2021
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Dr. Carla Kekejian is a licensed speech-language pathologist and founder of SoCal Speech-Language Therapy, a private practice dedicated to supporting pediatric speech and language development. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Utah and her M.A. in Education with a focus on Human Development and Psychology from UCLA. Dr. Kekejian is a faculty member at both CSUN and CSULB, where she instructs a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses in speech-language pathology.
Mariam Meliksetyan is an Armenian-American actress and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has been professionally trained at the prestigious UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television, Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins, and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Having worked as an actress in many independent films, she longed to tell stories from behind the camera as well. Fueled by a lifelong love for cinema and a fascination with documenting the world around her from a young age, she set out to make her directorial debut with the short experimental documentary “Say My Name” which she also produced.
Ara Oshagan is a diasporic multi-disciplinary artist and curator exploring dispossession, identity, and decolonization. Working in photography, collage, installation, and film, he has published four books and exhibited globally, including in Los Angeles, New York, Armenia, and South Korea. His work has been featured in NPR, LA Times, and Hyperallergic. Oshagan is an Artist-in-Residence at 18th Street Art Center and curator at Glendale’s ReflectSpace Gallery.
Gazelle Samizay, born in Kabul and raised in rural Washington, explores culture, nationality, and gender through her bicultural identity. Her photography and mixed media work has been exhibited globally and is in major museum collections. A published writer and vice president of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, she has received numerous awards. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and is the gallery director at UC Berkeley’s Worth Ryder Art Gallery.
Anahid Yahjian is a Los Angeles-based independent writer, director and producer of experimental, documentary and narrative cinema. Her work is driven by questioning and pursuit: of history, of power, of memory, of liminality, of the surreal and the sublime. Her commitment to telling true stories was shaped by an early love for visual storytelling that was formalized in college and took flight during her coming of age in Armenia. When not creating her own work, she directs commercials, branded content and music videos.
Thursday, February 27, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
The Center of Armenian Arts is proud to present Threads of Heritage, a collaborative exhibition celebrating the richness of Armenian traditions, cultural memory, and artistic expression. Featuring the works of Ani Gevorgian, Zepure Jerahian, and Shakeh Markarians, this showcase weaves together history and contemporary creativity, exploring patterns, textures, and narratives that connect past and present.
Join us for an inspiring journey through woven stories and artistic heritage.
Day/Time: Friday, May 2, 2025 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Day/Time: Saturday, May 3, 2025 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
My art is a dialogue with movement, fluidity, and the rawness of human vulnerability. Through photography and sculptural forms, I seek to evoke emotions that resonate beyond the tangible. My work defies the static and the finite, embracing the unspoken, the unfinished, and the imperfect.
Each piece carries a sense of continuation—a rhythm that echoes the ceaseless motion of life itself. For me, art is not about perfection but about stirring something profound within, reminding us that there is no true end, only the constant evolution of form, feeling, and connection.
Day/Time: Friday, April 25, 2025 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Day/Time: Saturday, April 26, 2025 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
The Center of Armenian Arts proudly presents Form & Abstraction, a solo exhibition by Shahen Zarookian, exploring the dynamic interplay of structure and spontaneity. Through bold compositions and expressive forms, Zarookian challenges conventional boundaries, inviting viewers into a world where shape, color, and movement take on new meaning.
Join us for this captivating showcase on:
Day/Time: Thursday, April 17, 2025 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Day/Time: Friday, April 18, 2025 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Day/Time: Saturday, April 19, 2025 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Experience the power of abstraction and discover the artistry behind form.
COSMIC SOLITUDE is an exploration of solitude and isolation in one of the Soviet Union’s largest cosmic ray research stations, located in the remote mountains of Armenia. Once a place of great scientific importance, the station continues to operate today, though only three people live and work there year-round, surrounded by silence and vast, open landscapes.
Through striking imagery, the book documents life at the station, offering a rare glimpse into a world where time seems to stand steel. But beyond its surface, Cosmic Solitude is a reflection on the deeper meanings of solitude both physical and existential. It encourages the viewer to pause and think about the connection between people and the places they inhabit, about time, and about the meaning of what it is to be human and alone.
Edited by renowned photo editor Sarah Leen and printed in Italy, Cosmic Solitude is a visual journey into one of the world’s most remote scientific outposts, where past and present quietly coexist.
YULIA GRIGORYANTS is a visionary documentary photographer from Armenia whose work explores the unseen aspects of human experience, capturingthe aftermath of conflict, the lives of marginalized communities, and the enduring impact of social and cultural challenges. Through her lens, she examines themes of memory, loss, and the quiet resilience of people.
Her photography is deeply influenced by her personal history: born in Azerbaijan to an Armenian family, Grigoryants fled the country in 1988 to escape the violence against Armenians. Growing up in Armenia during the transition from Soviet rule to independence, surviving a devastating earthquake, and enduring the socioeconomic hardship and scarcity following years of war. Her work has been published in major outlets such as The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Al Jazeera. It has also been showcased at the Sharjah Art Biennial (UAE), Musée Albert-Kahn (France), the Council of Europe (France), Somerset House (UK), The House of United Nations (Armenia).
Grigoryants has received several notable awards, including the Albert-Kahn Award and Prix Maison Blanche. She currently lives and works between Paris and Yerevan.
Day/Time: Tuesday, March 4, 2025 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
The “Odyssey” collection invites the audience to experience an artistic exploration of life’s journey. A modern approach on how each life stage and experience reshapes us, pulling us beyond who we were into who we are becoming.
Friday, April 4, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Saturday, April 5, 2025 from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Join Aperture and The Center for Armenian Arts for a conversation between photographer Diana Markosian and artist Ara Oshagan. They will discuss Markosian’s most recent publication, Father (Aperture, 2024), an intimate and engrossing diaristic portrayal of estrangement and reconnection, recounted through documentary photographs, family snapshots, text, and visual ephemera.
Diana Markosian: Father presents the Armenian photographer’s journey to another place and another time, where she attempts to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long-lost father. The book explores her father’s absence, her reconciliation with him, and the shared emptiness of their prolonged estrangement after a separation during Markosian’s childhood. The images, made over the course of a decade, take place in her father’s home in Armenia. Father follows her first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), in which Markosian recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s.
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Diana Markosian (born in Moscow, 1989) is among the leaders of a new generation of photographers and lens-based artists advancing documentary storytelling through image-making. In 1996, she moved to the US from Russia with her brother and mother, leaving behind her father, who would eventually relocate back to the family’s home country of Armenia. Her photographs have been published in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New Yorker. Her work is represented by Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris. The artist’s acclaimed first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), was selected as one of the top books of the year by Time and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine. She holds an MS from Columbia University in New York.
Ara Oshagan (born in Beirut) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and cultural worker who explores histories of marginalization, displacement, and identity. A descendant of communities uprooted from their indigenous land by the Armenian Genocide, he was born in Lebanon and displaced by war as a youth to the US. Oshagan has published four monographs and has exhibited his artwork internationally. His work has been featured in the LA Times, NPR’s Morning Edition, and Hyperallergic. His work is in the permanent collection of the Craft Contemporary Museum, Southeast Museum of Photography, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, and Modern Art Museum of Yerevan.
Tuesday, February 25 at 7:00 pm PST
“Bird of the Holy Spirit” is a groundbreaking art project by Kristina Oganezz, blending spirituality with visual artistry to create a unique preaching exhibition. Inspired by divine guidance, the exhibition features a series of paintings where Bible verses and spiritual concepts are depicted on black canvases with gold lettering. Utilizing the ancient Armenian bird-letters, inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, the artworks convey hidden messages of faith, love, and salvation.
Through this exhibition, Oganezz invites viewers on a spiritual journey, where each piece serves as a reflection of life’s core values and biblical wisdom. The showcase includes art installations such as “The Hidden Sin” and “Forbidden Fruit,” addressing universal themes of temptation and redemption. A highlight of the exhibition is the unveiling of Bird Numbers, created by Kristina Oganezz, an innovative artistic contribution that complements the traditional Armenian alphabet, further enriching the nation’s cultural heritage.
Ultimately, “Bird of the Holy Spirit” aims to inspire audiences to explore their faith, embrace spiritual values. “Bird of the Holy Spirit” Preaching Exhibition – A Unique Spiritual Art Experience.
Day/Time: Friday, April 11, 2025 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Day/Time: Saturday, April 12, 2025 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
TASHTAKERANK (Burnt Ends) is a collection of short stories that echo Khoren Aramanu’s memories from his early childhood to the present day (Iran, Armenia and the USA), imbued with subtle humor.
Khoren Aramouni Keshishyan is a writer, playwright, and translator. He was born in 1948 in Iran. Aramouni studied in the Armenian Studies department at the University of Isfahan for 2 years. In 1969, he repatriated to Armenia. He graduated from Yerevan State University in 1975. In 1980, Aramouni emigrated to the United States. He has been published regularly in Armenian language newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and collaborated on television programs. He is founder of I-Ben printing and publishing. He was also the U.S. representative of the Armenia based, Garoun monthly literary magazine. Aramouni’s first full-length book, Posthumous Wedding, was published in Armenia in 1992. Since 2004, Aramouni has been a member of the Writers’ Union of Armenia. In 2014, he received the William Saroyan medal from the Armenian Ministry of Diaspora. He was awarded a medal for his literary accomplishments from the Writers’ Union of Armenia in 2018. Aramouni has been recognized for his writing by several state and local institutions in California. Aramouni has published 18 books. Seven of his plays have been staged in Armenia and the U.S. He currently resides in Glendale, California.
Day/Time: Thursday, February 13, 2025 – 7:00PM
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