Over the past three years, the Dalan Fund has collaborated with various visual artists embedded in the CEECCNA regions to translate complex themes such as human rights, social justice, mutual aid, and resistance, etc, into powerful visual narratives. These collaborations help create impactful graphics that help us not only communicate ideas clearly but also challenge dominant visual narratives and reshape them.
At Dalan, we’re starting a series of profile stories highlighting the unique approach of each visual artist and observing how art becomes a tool for advocacy and social transformation.
Our first profile features Armenian artist Maretta Aivazian, a long-time collaborator. In addition to visualizing key reports such as our Seeding Report, our research Growing Against All Odds: Mapping Funding for Intersectional Organizing in the CEECCNA Regions, she has created Dalan’s visual identity, brandbook, developed graphics for our upcoming web-page relaunch, and is currently working on our Theory of Transformation, translating the change we aim to bring to the philanthropy funding ecosystem into visuals.
Photo features artist Maretta Aivazian.
Maretta´s collaboration with us has shaped our visual language, identity, and ways in which we convey our work. We sat down with her to discuss politics, memory, and the regional grounding that shapes her work.
Illustrations by Maretta Aivazian featuring cover pages of Dalan Fund’s Seeding Report and Growing Against All Odds: Mapping Funding for Intersectional Organizing in the CEECCNA Regions research.
Disconnection and Reconnection to Home
Maretta is a descendant of the grandparents of Armenians from Azerbaijan who fled the Armenian Genocide in Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century and settled in Azerbaijan, and in the 90s, moved to Russia. Growing up in Russia, she suppressed her Armenian identity as she was systemically bullied in her neighbourhood and school alike.
Reflecting on ethnic and racial dynamics in the Russian Federation, she mentions “The society positioned itself in a way that they needed to protect Slavs from ‘khach” (an ethnic slur coming from the Armenian word խաչ, used in Russian to insult people from the South Caucasus).
Arriving in Armenia in 2019 , felt like being embraced because she wasn’t “khach” anymore. From being perceived as the other, in Armenia, she was seen as a daughter and a sister. For the first time in her life, she was not judged by the tone of her skin. She channeled this warmth of embracement, this encouragement, and the pain of the Artsakh war [2020 Second Nagorno Karabakh war] into her artwork and gave her work a profound political grounding.
Now this is my way of reclaiming my identity and my heritage.
On Nostalgia and Memory
Maretta’s art is deeply entangled with memories and nostalgia of her childhood and being raised by her grandparents. “My works translate this feeling of connection, first of all, to the younger self that you may be trying or not trying to forget, but still, you are forgetting with age”, she says, and shares her love for depicting women and older people.
Illustrations by Maretta Aivazian from the series of Armenian Homescapes: A Visual Story of Nostalgia
As Maretta was raised by her grandmother, she feels a deep connection, sense of similarity, and deep understanding of each other. Strict and disciplined, her grandmother gave tough love. The strength of her grandmother made Maretta realize the power of women in society. Grounded in this knowledge, Maretta loves archives, learning from the past, and digging into history, which shows in how she conceptualizes and depicts women and old people in her work.
On Changing Narrative
Instead of rewriting existing visual narratives, Maretta, with her art, is trying to closely examine what is already there and point it out without romanticization.
You can find Maretta Avazian´s work and learn more about her vision here:
