In November 2024, artist Masha Keryan received an email from curator Shazia Mir of 1832 Gallery at LabCentral. It was an invitation to exhibit in April 2025 as part of the company’s celebration of Armenian Heritage Month.
“I found it touching that a non-Armenian organization and curator are interested in celebrating the resilience of our people, especially during these harsh times of trials and tribulations,” Keryan told the Weekly.
“When I received the email, I was working on a body of work titled ‘Ascendance,’ but it was not ready yet,” Keryan continued. The series depicts feet hanging from the top of the canvas and shoes from various eras floating in silent liminal spaces. One of the paintings from this series was recently featured on the cover of British magazine Wasafiri’s ‘Armenia(n)s: Elevation’ issue, guest edited by Tatevik Avazyan and Naneh V Hovhannisyan. The minimal works are poetic and powerful, especially for those with a collective memory of displacement, loss, genocide or war.
“I had to come up with a new body of work for this exhibit in a very short time. It had to be about the strength and beauty of Armenian culture,” she said.
1832 Gallery is located in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, inside a biotechnology organization called LabCentral, which provides new startups and developing companies with laboratory and office space. Keryan described her first site visit as inspiring and future-focused.
“It was incredible to walk down the long, bright hallways with art on the right and all these labs with fascinating equipment on the left. The energy in the space was infectious,” she said. “I began thinking of all the immigrants and children of immigrants working in this space of innovation. How inspiring are those who witness unbearable hardships and remain dedicated to the betterment of the future? The trail of thought took me back to my own immigration experience—my family’s new start in a foreign land after many other restarts prior to that. Their resilience, courage and sacrifice have allowed me to commit to practicing art. I felt overwhelming pride and respect.”
In 2009, Keryan’s family moved to Belmont, Massachusetts from Yerevan, Armenia. Fourteen at the time, Keryan attended Belmont High School and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“I acknowledged that starting anew is an integral part of my entire life, my family’s life and my people’s life overall. We keep losing, moving and creating in a cyclical manner,” she explained. “One thing that can never be taken away is the joy of gathering at a big table with all the traditional dishes, soulful laughter filling the room—no matter how grim life is. There is something very Armenian about keeping the heart wide—սիրտդ լայն պահիր— especially when the whole world seems to be against you, or even worse, ambivalent.”
After the site visit, Keryan returned to her studio in an artists’ building in Fort Point, Boston. Looking at the ‘Ascendance’ paintings on the walls that contemplate life after loss, she kept asking, ‘But what happens after?’
It’s not unusual for Armenians to look at the past and feel a strong desire to preserve or somehow recreate memories lost to injustice. At the time, Wasafiri’s Armenian issue had just been published, featuring a collective art piece on Armenian memory books (houshamadean) by historian Khatchig Mouradian, architect Garine Boghossian, poet Christopher Kazar Janigian and Keryan herself. She had already spent the year contemplating the phenomenon of Armenian American immigration—starting a new life on new land while documenting the homes they once had and could never return to.
“‘What Happens After’ is a new landscape, a new home and new people. A new desire to recreate the village that was left behind. A new table filled with grandmother’s recipes and traditional grilled meats, with new faces eating and toasting, brushing off with laughter the hardships of the past and present,” Keryan explained. “‘What Happens After’ is a new beginning and a new sense of purpose in each coming day.”
This vibrant body of work is inspired by elements of Armenian medieval art. Keryan had long been fascinated by the color palettes and compositions of Armenian medieval art, and this show became an opportunity to explore this inherited cultural visual language through her own distinct contemporary style. The exhibit features 30 oil paintings with direct references to illuminations and ornamental patterns found in these documents of Armenian civilization.
“The art form feels so far back in time, but when I started making master copies, I found them quite contemporary,” Keryan reflected. “The colors are of today. The facial expressions are comical and meme-like. There is so much humor in the painting manner itself. They’re so precious and often showcased behind a thick glass, in this serious setting of a museum with dim lights. You walk in and there is no fun and no sense of being welcomed into the work.
“Here I was, some lucky descendant of Armenian survivors, with my skin on these pages illuminated in 1475! What time travel! We both made it to 2025!”
Some of the paintings in ‘What Happens After’ feature repetitive compositions reminiscent of the Last Supper, with a table, food, plates and brightly colored figures frozen in movement, such as “Gathering,” “Sunset” and “Decadence.” The chosen elements are based on Armenian miniature paintings—even the empty plates are a nod to the halos present in Christian paintings.
“In Christian art, the Last Supper is very much an iconic image recaptured by artists over and over again. So, now I’m thinking of what happens after—after betrayal, after crucifixion, after resurrection, after ascension,” Keryan said.
The figures in Keryan’s paintings are devoid of personal references—stripped of labels, hair and clothing. “Once there is a specific hairstyle, it tells about the person’s conscious learned behavior,” Keryan explained. “The figures in the work address the pure human in us, beyond categorizations—a concept I’ve been exploring for some years now.”
Keryan applies thick layers of oil paint with various palette knives and dental tools to create the shapes of the figures and ornaments. “It’s a long and attention-requiring process, which reminds me of miniature painting itself,” she said. “The effortless look of the miniatures requires precision, control over movement and intuitive understanding of color. This was the first art form I was introduced to at Igityan art center at the age of six.”
Since 2019, Keryan has worked with oil paint in a sculptural manner, carefully creating ridges with the paint that are activated by the interplay of light and shadow. “I guess, I’m using old material in a contemporary manner,” she said.
Lustrous Armenian ornaments dominate the backgrounds of some works in the series. Occasionally, the floral and decorative ornaments come to the foreground or completely occupy the canvas. Their importance is evident. “I always wanted to weave these elements into my work, but didn’t feel ready before,” Keryan said. She manages to recontextualize and repurpose these centuries-old ornaments in an organic manner.
“While working with the patterns, the symbols contained within them come to life and reveal the personality of these artists. To translate these ornaments into my work, first I draw the patterns, then add the figures or hands inspired by the patterns themselves, and lastly, I choose the colors to match certain emotional states. At the studio, it feels like a collaborative learning process with the past,” she said. An example is “Prayer,” in which praying hands follow the pattern of tiny swirling churches and hearts, which, to the modern eye, look like emojis.
After four months of intense research and creation, Keryan has completed the exhibition in time for the celebration of Armenian Heritage Month. She hopes that ‘What Happens After’ marks the beginning of ongoing research merging the past with the continuous present.
‘What Happens After’ will be on display from April 10 to May 30, 2025. The opening reception will take place on April 10, from 4:30-8:00 p.m. at 1832 Gallery in LabCentral, 700 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02139. Register online and follow Keryan’s work at https://www.mashakeryan.com/.
Lizzy Vartanian
