Paul Guiragossian

Private Collection, Beirut (commissioned directly from the artist circa 1964)

This work is in very good condition. There is a very small spot of abrasion and paint loss on the top centre edge. Colours:The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate.
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Karantina Camp is stunning in its rendition. Guiragossian’s oeuvre maps an artistic progression both technically adept and conceptually sophisticated, positioning him as one of the most versatile and avant-garde Lebanese painters of his generation. Biographic in content and archival in product, this rare work reflects a reality both deeply personal and universally relatable. It is a landscape scene of a territory in which Armenians in exile were originally placed and where they began to rebuild a new home. As part of a series done in response to the plight of Armenian migrants in the 1960s, its inception may bear the heaviness of exile, but its execution is coloured with the hope of humanity searching for solace. While known widely for his figurative works, Guiragossian also painted several Armenian landscapes in the 1940s – a testament perhaps, to his deep belief in community.

Karantina Camp was originally titled Bourj Hammoud, the larger area in the suburbs of Beirut which contained the three camps allocated to Armenian migrants – Karantina being one of them. The renaming of this painting pulls it from the liminal and acknowledges it as a specific space reclaimed by a community uprooted. Conceptually, it is painted with the traces of Guiragossian’s own displacement, not only as an Armenian but also as a Palestinian refugee. Aesthetically, Karantina Camp becomes a beautifully poignant record of old Beirut and the subsequent birth of a constructed hometown; and one which has special meaning after the Karantina Camp massacre of 1976.

Guiragossian’s work reminds us that the loss of land and trajectory of migrants are regretfully recurring and remain as universal motifs. Although its tragedy is indiscriminate, he shows us that the resilience of a community can ground an otherwise displaced psyche; that the spaces we manoeuvre are only given meaning through the imprints we leave along the way. His horse and carriage, gentle allusions to lives being rebuilt, sustain our hope in humanity’s strength and dignity.