Meri Karapetyan
Meri Karapetyan is a graduate of Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. Her current series “Recollected Borders” problematizes the notion of the border itself. Karapetyan “conjugates” the border as if it were a verb, examining the border from a wide variety of angles ranging from the physical to the psychological and metaphysical. She thus deconstructs the notion of borders –from everyday borders that we experience in almost every aspect of our daily lives to the borders between states and nations: “What else, if not the artwork itself, is meant to deconstruct the notion of the border? Isn’t art the only way to “disarm” that notion…(and) eventually take up the primary role of the border defining the undefinable.” As she mentions in her artist’s statement in a nod to Richard Serra, her artwork “speaks the languages of space.” Karapetyan’s brilliant appropriation of barbed wire in Blooming Barbed Wire–wherein delicate black flowers take the place of the barbs themselves–are also a nod to her native Armenia’s troubled geopolitical situation.