This article is part of Hyperallergic‘s Pride Month Seriesfeaturing an interview with a different emerging or mid-career transgender or non-binary artist each weekday throughout June.
Based in Detroit, Michigan, non-binary Armenian-American artist Levon Kafafian is a weaver of words, threads and worlds. Kafafian investigates pre-Christian and Ottoman Armenian cultures and livelihoods, examining archaeological artefacts and material records to inform a world that exists in the “Armenian diasporic imagination”. Kafafian clarified that they were not transcribing this built realm, but rather channeling it through their multi-disciplinary practice of yarn and clothing, language and text, and objects imbued with spirituality. Amid Azerbaijan’s pursuit destruction of ancient and culturally significant sitesKafafian breathes strange new life into lost customs and traditions, giving them space to grow with the diaspora.
In the interview below, the artist expresses her desire for a “queer Armenian future,” acknowledging the staunch colonialist and imperialist binary that enforces traditional gender roles. The Kafafian current exposure at the Stamps Gallery on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus consists of elegantly constructed clothing and accessories, powerful amulets, and physical representations of the portal in between that connects the artist to this futuristic landscape derived from the past. “The fabric is worms,” Kafafian says. “The fabric communicates. Weaving uses a binary system to produce non-binary objects that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Hyperallergic: What is the current orientation of your artistic practice?
Levon Kafafian: Thread by thread, I am currently building a narrative world called Azadistan for a possible graphic novel titled gate fire. This world emerges from the diasporic imagination of Southwest Asia and takes place in the distant future after a digital collapse. From now on, I focus on his cosmology – the spiritual beings who protect the inhabitants of the earth and allow them to practice fire magic. To that end, I delve into researching Armenian spiritual traditions, practices, and artifacts through time, blending this with my lived experiences and desires for the future. As I synthesize them into woven fabrics, costumes, and artifacts, I learn more about the character of this world and the beings that inhabit it, generating the written traditions and narrative that inform future works.
H: In what ways, if any, does your gender identity play a role in your experience as an artist?
LK: My journey with gender is a reflection of the many in-between spaces I grew up in and accepted – which led me to engage my work with attention to hybridity, borders fuzzy and ultimately to new possibilities outside of “the establishment”. canon. » I mix disciplines and intertwine my practices: the handcrafting of costumes and artefacts helps me to intuitively synthesize archival research, family histories and personal experience, which helps me generate poetry , short stories and performances often focused on the game in genre expression.
H: Which artists inspire your work today? What are your other sources of inspiration?
LK: I’m still a little disarmed by the question of which artists inspire me as I’m influenced by an endless parade of creative practitioners. Notably, however, I am inspired by my ancestors, both blood-bound and beyond; all my collaborators: Nick Szydlo, Ash Arder, Kamelya Omayma Youssef, Kamee Abrahamian, Augusta Morrison, Lara Sarkissian, among others; and by the copious amounts of sci-fi and fantasy media (graphics and anime, live-action, video games, board games, novels) with which I engage; and finally, documentaries and documentaries on nature, science, language or history. Youtube shorts that I look at before going to bed.
H: What are your hopes for the LGBTQIA+ community right now?
LK: Right now, my hope is that in all the places where we are suppressed and attacked, we continue to boldly claim space, showing those around us that different ways of being are possible, beautiful, and inherently valuable; that we cannot and will not be erased or silenced; and that we continue to experience abundant joy, rest, and love in the midst of this struggle.
