Ara Oshagan: Traces of Identity

Ara Oshagan will present an inquiry into transnational identity and layering of place+memory through a series of projects from the diaspora and homeland. Sourced from documentary photography, Oshagan’s work is often collaborative and expands through installation work into the public sphere. He will present work from Los Angeles, Beirut and Nagorno-Karabagh.

Ara Oshagan’s photographic and installation work revolves around the intersecting themes of identity, community, and displacement.

His first book, Father Land, about a remote unrecognized post-soviet region of Armenia, was published by powerHouse books in 2010. His second book, Mirror, was self-published in 2016: it uses augmented reality to bridge the worlds of image and sound. His other projects include “A Poor Imitation of Death” about the lives of youth in the California prison system; “iwitness” portraits of witnesses of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and their stories of survival, and “Traces of Identity” about transnational identity as seen through the Armenian community of Los Angeles. His installation work includes “(re)population” in Armenia and “iwitness” at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

Oshagan has had solo exhibitions at the LA Municipal Art Gallery, Downey Museum of Art, PowerHouse Arena and Tufenkian Fine Art. His work has been reviewed and featured in the Times Literary Supplement, LA Times, LA Weekly, PDN, Mother Jones, Zeke and on NPR’s Morning Edition and is in the permanent collection of the Southeast Museum of Photography, the Downey Museum of Art, the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, and the MOMA in Armenia.

In 2015, Oshagan (along with his collaborators) was selected as one of “100 Leading Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy Magazine in DC.