On Friday, April 12, starting at 7:00 p.m., Borderline Art Space hosts the exhibition “Soon Violets Will Bloom Along the Collapsed Wall” by French artist Rebecca Topakian. Curated by François Cheval, the exhibition can be visited until May 22, 2024.
The opening will be preceded by a presentation entitled “Photographing the Absence: Memory of the Armenian Orphanage in Strunga”, which the artist will hold, at the invitation of the National Museum of Literature in Iasi, at Studio J in Casa Pogor, from 6 p.m.
Curatorial argument:
“Following… At some point in his career, what photographer hasn’t had a retrospective look at a certain object, up close, too close? The danger of looking back is one that Lot knew first-hand: that nostalgia, that sense of irrelevance that can turn you into a statue of salt. Rebecca Topakian, patiently researching fragments of the history of the Armenian orphanage in Strunga, certainly seeks to consolidate her identity but also wants to abandon herself to the chance of new perspectives.
The fragments of architecture attest to a presence; the testimonies support it. These fragments, caught by nature, are nourished by the wandering souls of these orphans. This great Whole regenerates the passage of children to enroll them in its history. They were here, they are still here! Not as ghosts but as food for the living.
Rebecca Topakian had to choose between two attitudes: one that minimizes everything to banish her demons and one that aestheticizes. It’s not that easy to get it right, because we must not exaggerate either the banal or the beautiful.
From the sadness of the genocide to the emigration routes leading to Strunga, the journey is long and, of course, risky. It’s hard not to get lost because what’s left to see is the white pebbles that history left behind.
Rebecca Topakian simply took care to put together a few images, seemingly out of the blue, collected at random.”
Rebecca Topakian graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 2015. With a background in philosophy and geography, she questions notions of identity in her works, articulated in the relationship between poetry, intimacy and politics. Her works have been part of national and international exhibitions.
She was preselected for FOAM Talent 2019 and was a laureate of the national commission “Regards du Grand Paris 2020”. In 2021, she was the laureate of the Fondation des Artistes scholarship and the CNAP scholarship for documentary photography, the Blow Up Press Award, and the Bourse Transverse for a duo of photographers and plastic artists. In 2022, she was the laureate of the Fénéon Prize and the national photography commission from the BNF.
In 2023, he received the ADIAF Emergence Award. Her first book, Infra, was selected for the author’s book prize at Les Rencontres d’Arles. Her book Dame Gulizar And Other Love Stories (Blow Up Press) will be published in July 2024.
