When The World Looks Away emerges from the charged environment of the studio: ongoing paintings, bottles of Armenian pigment, found objects, and other fragments left behind by a fast-paced process of making. Each work within When The World Looks Away begins with layers of archival photographs, folk imagery, and sheet music gathered from Armenian history books. As other paintings develop nearby, these materials accumulate incidental traces, splashes of paint, pools of ink, stains, and marks left by the movement of the studio itself. Informed by chance, the works are discovered and recognized as a residue of a larger process. What remains is then brought forward as standalone pieces, allowing overlooked fragments to become images in their own right.

Painting becomes an act of concealment within the works of When The World Looks Away, as color and pigment echo the ways cultural memory is erased. What ultimately survives is usually incomplete. While inspired by Armenian history, When The World Looks Away speaks to a broader pattern of cultural erasure. Sacred sites being demolished, libraries burned, monuments desecrated, and communities displaced in attempts to sever people from their histories. The destruction of the medieval Armenian cemetery at Julfa in Nakhchivan (where thousands of intricately carved khachkars (cross-stones) were systematically destroyed) stands alongside countless other examples throughout history, from the devastation of heritage sites during wartime to the loss of Indigenous landscapes through colonization. Though separated by geography and time, these acts share a common purpose: to erase all evidence of a people’s existence.

The buried imagery within When The World Looks Away functions as a symbolic record rather than a deliberate illustration. Hidden beneath each surface, memory remains even when it can no longer be fully seen. This partial visibility reflects resilience. When The World Looks Away asks what remains after monuments fall and histories are rewritten. It asks about the consequences of indifference, on the ease with which cultural destruction can unfold when our world chooses not to see.