Fig Tree Gallery
The longest-running, member-sponsored art gallery in California

Hazel Antaramian















Artist's Statement
I am interested in capturing subject matter related to philosophical quests and anthropological themes. Selected subjects are part of my search for spiritual fulfillment. My work speaks to hope within the paradoxes of mal-historical circumstance and reoccurring universal themes of life’s uncertainties and inequities.
Using symbolic and incongruous collective social imagery, I construct and deconstruct the cultural and social consequences of migration and displacement of people over time. I depict segmented aspects of the displaced “body,” fragmented geographically and culturally by trauma, politics, social disparities, idealism, and sentimentality. I am drawn to the flatness of the canvas as well as film, not willing to show depth instead unified on a single plane. Picture plane layering offers the setting, where I merge iconic or traditional imagery and cultural symbols to convey the exploits of misguided societal dogma upon the unassuming “other”.
My mixed media paintings (acrylic, pencil, crayon, charcoal, spray paint, photo transfers), and experimental films are devised to reflect the fragmented, unfinished, effaced, and worn, from such subtleties as imperfect lines and shapes, to scrapping, tearing, and defacement. Processes used upon a given imagery to depict lives deceived, manipulated, shattered and lost. I use symbolic imagery and motifs found in pagan artifacts, and traditional signs in medieval and renaissance art to show spheres of the spirit.
My last major solo at Fig Tree Gallery was ‘Other Pieces.’ It was based on the paths of migrants and the search for their homeland, namely, the post-WWII repatriation to Soviet Armenia and the deceptive aspects of the journey.