Fabric and metal wire. 15 pieces, 7 characters. 200cm x 200cm x 200cm
I am in the corridor. I am dead.
My parents and brother are coming out of their rooms, and they are dead.
For weeks before, I dreamt of this moment many times, hearing the bomb explode,
being dead. And here I am, just as I imagined. My ears ringing, the detonation clear
as a bell, the force throwing me from bed.
And then I am alive, remembering the girl we found in the bombed out building, down
the street, on the second floor, in a red coat. And she was dead. Never alive again.
I am cutting old clothes, removing fabric between the stitching. The remains take me
back to the girl, to the war, to genocide. I remember playing Seven Stones in the
street, laughing.
And I begin to cry. There can never be enough crying.
The ghosts of these children, the remains of their clothes, the joy of the game, the
street, my friends pull me into the next moment, and pull and pull. I am a ghost
traveling because I am dead.
With First Street Green
CARPETS, Pipe insulation and construction net, 2012
VISIONING MAP, Ideas City with new Museum and partners, construction net, 2013
In 2008 Silva Ajemian and Jorge Prado teaming up with residents of First Street in Manhattan co-founded First Street Green, and open art space, a non-profit collaboration with the goal of converting a derelict lot of land located at 33 East 1st Street from an inaccessible, garbage-strewn, rat-infested piece of “vacant” land into an active public space.
Collaborating with NYC Parks and Partnership For Parks, FSG has successfully incorporated the lot into First Park. Today, FSG provides ongoing cultural activity in First Park by engaging with emerging artists, architects, community and cultural groups through a series of programs that activate this place.
Images of Gaza in the El Pais on Sundays.
Newspaper and thread, 21cm x 29cm, 2025
Silva Ajemian
Rope paper, thread, netting, metal wire. 200X300cm, 2025
Silva Ajemian
Drawings, lenticulars and models
Silva Ajemian with Aslihan Demirtas
Commissioned for ‘Blind Dates‘, exhibition curated by Neery Melkonian & Defne Ayas, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 2010-11, New York City
models by Richard Tenguerian
photos by Silva Ajemian
Commissioned for ‘Blind Dates‘, exhibition curated by Neery Melkonian & Defne Ayas, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 2010-11, New York City
models by Richard Tenguerian
photos by Silva Ajemian
At Ani, a bridge once connected the two banks of the Akhurian/Arpaçay river. Today, of the now collapsed bridge, only the abutments on the two sides of the river remain, one in Turkey and the other in Armenia. As the remains of the bridge exist in two territories, Ani exists in two worlds, at once an important historic Armenian capital and an archeological ruin in a military zone in Turkey at the border with Armenia.
Two architects are seduced by the collapsed bridge.
Their project consists of a series of visual, graphic and tectonic ‘conversations’, set up to investigate and interpret the multiple existences of Ani, the river and its disconnected bridge. The ‘conversations’ start by revealing the lenticular existence of the place and develop by interweaving the resulting existences, references and projections.
Mixed media, ongoing
Silva Ajemian
Pencil and paper, 21cm x 29.7cm, 2013
Silva Ajemian
Mixed media, 10cm x 15cm, 1990-1999
Silva Ajemian
Bamboo and rocks, 20cm x 30cm each, 1999
Silva Ajemian and Jorge Prado (TODO DA)
