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Santa Barbara

Diana Markosian

Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris

The Arrival. My family arrived to America in 1996. My mother described it as the arrival to nowhere, with the hope of going somewhere.
The Arrival. My family arrived to America in 1996. My mother described it as the arrival to nowhere, with the hope of going somewhere.

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Title
Santa Barbara
Gallery
Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris
Year
2020
Duration
14 min
Format & Technical

HD, Single-Channel Video, Colour, Sound

Santa Barbara explores the nature of family and the American Dream. Through a narrative video, Markosian recreates the story of her family’s journey from post-Soviet Russia to America in the 1990s. In it, the artist grapples with the reality that her mother, seeking a better life for herself and her two young children, came to America as a mail-order bride. Markosian’s mother chose her future husband who lived in Santa Barbara, a city made famous in Russia when the 1980s soap opera of that name became the first American television show broadcast there.

Stills

Still
Still
Still

Diana Markosian

Artist
www.dianamarkosian.com

1989, Moscow

Diana Markosian

Diana Markosian (born in Moscow, 1989) is a Russian-American photographer of Armenian descent. Her work explores memory and place through a layered, interdisciplinary process that uses video, photography, drawings and historical ephemera. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. Her first monograph, ‘Santa Barbara is published by Aperture in 2020 and is accompanied by a show premiering at Les Rencontres d’Arles in (2020) before moving to San Francisco MOMA (2020), International Center of Photography, NYC (2021), in the Fotomuseum of Antwerp and at Vevey Festival in Switzerland in 2022.

Related galleries

Galerie Les filles du calvaire

Address
17 Rue des Filles du Calvaire, 75003, Paris, France
Phone
+33 (0)1 42 74 47 05
Website
www.fillesducalvaire.com

The gallery Les filles du calvaire, founded in 1996 by Stéphane Magnan in the Marais in Paris, is historically located at 17 rue des filles du calvaire. In 2023, the gallery opens a second space of 300m2 at 21 rue Chapon to develop its activities.

The gallery is dedicated to contemporary creation. The artists it represents come from multiple horizons. The program is thus rich in dialogue between the commitments and practices of each one.