PENUMBRA Members Gallery | Osheen Harruthoonyan

A Circle of Bluebirds re-imagines the history of the artist's family in Armenia and Italy through three different lenses: a telescope, a microscope, and the artist's imagination. Photographs of the sun, Saturn, and the north star are infused with other-worldly images overlaid onto landscapes as themes of love, happiness and connection absent from the stories of Harruthoonyan's past create visions of a new earth. On this other earth, bluebirds, an ancient symbol of love and happiness, take the place of distant stars. A young girl swallows a star, and, butterflies weave through constellations and space dust. 

The Van Allen belt, a protective field between the realms of astronomy and biology, is the invisible circle holding the artist's vision together. In this belt, the creation, destruction and re-creation of energy is constantly occurring - not unlike the memories of the places where our families are born, and reborn, throughout generations. While it cannot be seen with the naked eye, when the movement of this energy is translated into auditory waves, it sounds like a circle of birds chirping - proving that it is, perhaps, only our limited mentalities or methods that keep us from experiencing the new worlds awaiting just beyond the stories that defined our past.

Osheen Harruthoonyan is a photographer and printer photographer who merges movement with themes of cultural heritage and renewal. His limited-edition alternative process and silver prints bring together images of the macro – the sun, Saturn, mount Ararat – with the micro – specks of dust, tiny organisms – to create a new perspective of the world around us, challenging our perception of familiar sights and landscapes through interweaving themes of hope and wonder into the visual narratives we interact with on a daily basis. Osheen’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibits, collections and publications; most recently at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, the Louvre in Paris, as well as features on Vice!, Bravo! Arts, Space Channel, and the CBC’s “Exhibitionists”.

www.osheenh.com

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