‘To Life!’: Krikor Momdjian at the JCR Art Gallery

When asked whether yellow, which appears in so many of his paintings, is his favourite colour, multimedia visual artist and poet Krikor Momdjian responded with just one word: Life. Yellow, for Krikor, captures the essence and vibrancy of life. For an artist whose self-proclaimed motto is ‘to life!’, it is no surprise that his recent exhibition in the JCR Art Gallery was an explosion of colour. Krikor, gesticulating passionately as he talked about his works at the exhibition’s opening, is as vibrant a man as is his art. 

Like his ‘soulmate’ Van Gogh, Krikor returns to yellow again and again; from Mondrian he became fascinated with the relationship between form and colour. Ethnically Armenian and born and raised in Lebanon, Krikor spent time studying Fine Art in two of the world’s art capitals – Paris and Florence – before settling in the Netherlands in 1979. It is no wonder that he describes himself as a ‘wanderer’ in the title of an exhibition that spans (a selection of) 50 years of his life’s work: ‘Life Map of a Wanderer – Transcultural Relations.’ Lebanon, Florence, Jerusalem - the locations around the world in which Krikor completes his paintings have changed throughout his career, but his love of geometric forms, bright colours, and lines remains the same. 

Yet, when entering the JCR Art Gallery, the audience is confronted with a large rectangular painting, part of Krikor’s Transcultural Relations series, with the question ‘Jerusalem why so much pain and miseries?’ scrawled on a white rectangle, with a background of bold, primary colours. Violence and conflict, the antithesis to life, act as opposing forces to the vibrant colours of canvases named after countries with traumatic histories, from Armenian genocide, to war in Lebanon and Jerusalem. Hope reigns supreme in Krikor’s canvases, however, with white representing ‘the divine’ and the possibility for peace or achieving ‘equilibrium’ as he describes it. Spirituality is the thread that weaves the exhibition’s other themes of identity, nature and life together. 

Co-Chairs of the JCR Art Fund Amy Wilkinson and Leela Kainth, who organised the exhibition alongside Pembroke Professor Theo Maarten van Lint, described “the opportunity to work on a project which was the culmination of many years of work for our artist, Krikor Momdjian” as “a privilege and a worthwhile learning process during our first term as Co-Chairs.” They continued: “It was a varied and enriching experience which showed us new ways of working, and we developed a lasting and positive connection between Krikor and the Art Fund, which we hope came through at each of our events. We are immensely proud of this as our first exhibition together, and of the enthusiastic reception from those who attended – we can only hope the rest of the year’s projects go as well!”

Find out more about the Pembroke JCR Art Collection here and read Pembroke student Avin Houro’s review of the exhibition here.