This is the final post of Medz Yeghern, my daily 100 years later drawing project of the Armenian Genocide.
Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the 104th anniversary marking the genocide. Four years ago I started this project to draw the genocide every day as it happened, 100 years later. I named it “Medz Yeghern” (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, “Great Crime”). It’s been a terrifying and heartbreaking thing to look at and draw every day.
Four years later, I’m now finishing the project. Medz Yeghern started as mostly documentation as I drew what history I could find. Over time the project became less about specific dates and more about victims and trying to understand, in a tiny and weak way, their experiences. A big part of all my work is trying to remember, or to not forget. I know looking and drawing is almost nothing compared to what happened, but it is something. I’m doing my best to not forget.
Some highlights for me:
- A year of drawing the same image every day
- On a day when 14,000 Armenians were massacred, I drew 14,000 marks on paper
- Finding, through drawing, iconography like the moon, the sun, knives, smoke, fire, and using those to tell small tales.
I also learned, as in my other daily drawing projects, that a continued practice lends itself to deep exploration. I tried different ways of drawing, different subjects, as many ways of documenting and telling as I could. Reinvention over and over.
I struggled with when and how to end the project. Like many historical events there's not a neat beginning or end to the Genocide. Even after the Ottoman Empire was defeated and broken up, and after an Armenian state had been established (before it was absorbed into the U.S.S.R.), massacres and deportations were still happening. Though the bulk of the killing was over, into the 1920s the forming Turkish state brutally ethnically cleansed Armenians (and other minorities). I could keep drawing this for years.
I decided to end the project where it began, on Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24, and with a first-hand account by a survivor of her experiences in 1915. I'm grateful to have been able to share part of her story - I wanted to end with a story that didn't hide the horror but was also open and hopeful, about surviving.
This project is dedicated to the people I drew. Thanks to my extended family for all the lahmajoon.
There’s more drawing to do.
You can learn more about the genocide here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
Thanks.