Contused space 

It was Sunday, September 27, 2020, when the Armenian-Azerbaijani war broke out a year ago. The war lasted 44 days; a tripartite agreement put an end to it on November 9. 

Life was divided into “before” and “after”. The present resembled a dismantled reality. 

The next day I was in Artsakh already. I documented both the war period and the developments that came later; I kept records of the reality that was constantly changing. 

My post-war records covered areas that were to be surrendered to Azerbaijan. People burnt houses they had built with their own hands as If they were burning their whole life; this was like an act of self-immolation. This was already the third war many of these people witnessed since 1990. 

The war has ended, yet it goes on. Azerbaijan is gradually pushing its positions forward within Armenia’s borders. The Armenian side is paralyzed and shows no resistance. 

The map of Armenia, shaped like a young girl, is being consistently distorted. 

The issues I got concerned about during my documenting activities transformed into the reason to cover post-war traumas as well, the unknown present that we seek to coexist with today. 

How is the grief of loss dealt with not only individually, but also in the context of national reality? 

Each family faces its anguish in their own way. 

People walk the streets wearing t-shirts with the photos of their loved ones who were killed in the war. Mothers always bring the sweets their boys liked to their tombs. At dinnertime, there is always an extra plate for them on the table. 

Paradoxical contradiction embraces the missing present and the present absence forming a canonical ritual of coexisting with pain. 

Home-based memorial corners contain the photographs of the fallen soldier and his awards, along with items that bore his last breath: the last candy, the last money, blood-stained photo of the girlfriend, the cross that broke in a mine explosion, right on the chest… 

Each thing related to the loss seems to become sacral; the distortion of space and time blocks the mourning, the opportunity to say good-bye to something that used to be your life in the yet half-finished past. 

How are we going to deal with our grief?

Where does the pain go, the pain of the living ones who suffered the loss?

How do we perceive ourselves in this distorted reality squeezed between yesterday and tomorrow?