Abelina Galustian - Womansword and Beyond

A be lin a G alust i an

Wo m a ns wo r d a n d B eyo n d

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A b e lina G a lus t ia n Wo ma ns wor d a nd B eyond

D irecto r ’s Fo r e wo r d

Abelina Galustian – Womansword and Beyond, represents an occasion to view the moving works of Abelina Galustian. With an M.F.A. in Painting and a Ph.D. in Art History, Abelina is by far, more than most, able to revisit nineteenth and twentieth century Orientalist painting. Abelina’s has a broad understanding of its meanings and conventions. By the means of appropriation, she is able to reinvent this narrative and create works of art that can interrupt the oppressive nature of the past. Her work helps to generate meaningful discussions about the future and helps create an enjoyable, life long, learning process about painting.

The University Art Gallery’s programing helps to support our faculty’s teaching. It is through faculty recommendations that many exhibitions come to our galleries. This exhibition was recommended by my colleague Dr. Staci Gem Scheiwiller, who has also graciously written the essay about Abelina’s work for this catalog.

I would like to thank Abelina Galustian for the opportunity to exhibit her brilliant work, Dr. Staci Gem Scheiwiller for recommending Abelina to be invited to exhibit with us, and for writing the insightful catalog essay, the College of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design, Parks Printing for printing the catalog. We are also grateful and extend our warmest appreciation to the Instructionally Related Activities Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue.

Dean De Cocker Director, University Art Galleries California State University, Stanislaus

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Ab elin a Galu s tian - Wom a n s w or d a n d B ey ond

My visual argument began as a response to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalist paintings. In appropriating the language and methods of renowned European master narratives, my work found its initial entree to a platform where counterclaims of Orientalizing stereotypes take place. This mission began with the Womansword series in an attempt to refute normalized, rationalized, and legitimized racist and sexist practices that render the Other invisible, inconsequential, and negligible. In opting for some of the most famed and familiar Orientalist paintings, my work claimed a space within the stage of canonized discourse to talk back to the central forces of power. Since these chosen depictions are almost iconic, quoting from them with alterations that are explicitly construed as political, call for a double take and scrutiny.

The old masters’ narratives, from which I quote, benefitted extensively from photographs as a new tool in their paint box. Photo references provided accessibility within Orient’s gender-restricted areas, thus making it a convenient practice in fabricating documentary-style portrayals of the Other, and ultimately in the conditioning of human vision. The mimetic engagement in my work makes use of the same stylistic techniques and processes to revise the Orientalist framework. The re-articulation of canonical narratives is an attempt to interrupt the oppressive boundaries of dominant forces, and for that, there must be a degree of turbulence. It was this very turbulence that I embraced purposefully to break out of my own conventional paradigm.

Previous spread: Miss Illegal Alien, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 72” x 54”, 2020 Left: PLAyatollah, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 48” x 60”, 2020

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Queen’s Preferred: Vandalized and Unfinished, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 72” x 54”, 2002

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Ab elin a Galu s tian

BIOGRAPHY Abelina Galustian was born in Tehran, Iran to Armenian parents of the diaspora. During the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq War, her family escaped the country to seek refuge from Iraq’s earlier attacks.

They eventually found the opportunity to start a new life in California, and despite their traumatic migration, the motivation to continue toward a brighter future gave them the hope of recovering their fundamental rights.

The challenges that came with a complete uprooting subsumed not only the losses of material and socio-cultural capital, but also generational dissonance—intensified due to the difficult adjustment to their host society.

The bicultural conflicts pushed Galustian to adhere to the normative expectations in both private and public spaces. Following the standard patterns of cultural norms and values in each realm (private/public, old/new) became a coping strategy she endured perpetually, notwithstanding her best efforts to access a presence in the social commentaries of her art. Galustian’s parents condemned the Womansword paintings, claiming that the works were an affront to Armenian/Eastern values. They viewed her work apart from the larger meaning in the project and labeled it pornographic and prurient. The subsequent estrangement of Galustian by her parents lasted more than a year, during which time art became the lens by which she viewed the world. Her works simultaneously and inadvertently became a type of litmus test that exposed the thinly veiled ideologies of the viewing public.

The evocations of invisible politics in her visual language extracted violent and unpredictable reactions from both men and women. She was baffled by the audience’s reception at first, but in retrospect, it made sense for visual communication in the form of painting to be immediate, visceral, and violent itself for its instant penetration and assault on the senses.

The complex socio-psychological reception of Galustian’s artworks would lead to her intellectual pursuit of critical art history in higher education, where she honed her symbolic (Woman)sword. Both critic and artist, Galustian could now see how the plastic arts transcended the limits of language, and evoked reactions that were raw, honest, and immediate, eliding space and time for political correctness.

Galustian’s attempts to introduce objection to “objective-styles” in the Orientalist documentary ideal, informed her utilization of the same methods of Master artists. The heavy reliance on photo-references have long been a critical component in Orientalist painters’ repertoire to generate absolute accuracy, but for Galustian, it became an effective tool to turn the viewer’s gaze toward the direction of uncomfortable truths. Her study of the representational regimes in Orientalism led to a more candid approach in her collaborative works with photographer, Hilma Shahinian. Together, they joined forces in 2003 on what would be the Veiled series that opposed the fanatical control over women’s bodies, but, ironically, it was a woman attending the underground feminist art exhibition in Iran, who had the works confiscated by authorities. Fourteen years later, they again risked being blacklisted by their birth country, when Shahinian’s expert photography and Galustian’s hyperrealist brush worked in tandem to produce PLAyatollah. In this work, they target the blind spots of corruption, deception and

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Queen’s Preferred: Vandalized and Unfinished, vandalized details

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hypocrisy of religious extremists and high-ranking clergy by appropriating a womanly gaze within the masculine artistic production.

The criminalization of race during Trump’s authority, inevitably evoked memories of domination with its violence and shaming practices. Stamped in bold red letters, the words “Illegal Alien,” was affixed on Galustian’s administrative school files by the US Department of Education. She bore her nonhuman status of alien while her family spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to protect their right to establish residency. After relentless efforts for legal assistance, Galustian petitioned independently for naturalization, and it wasn’t until 1995 when the judge, who happened to be Armenian, conducted the swearing-in ceremony for her admittance to U.S. citizenship. In her latest painting titled Miss Illegal Alien, Galustian collaborates, once again, with Shahinian to illuminate racialized and gendered dynamics. The work exhibits how local/global forces claim ownership of the entire embodiment of the female subject as a site of negotiation and a zone of engagement, and raises questions regarding who belongs, who is “qualified,” and who gets to determine life trajectories.

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Quoting Cercone, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 54” x 72”, 2002

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Q u otin g Sile n c e s : D e p i ct i n g F e m a l e D e s i re s in th e Pain tin gs o f A b e l i n a G a l u s t i a n

By Staci Gem Scheiwiller In Abelina Galustian’s Quoting Cercone (2002), the painting centers around a questionably-endowed, flaccid male nude under the exacting scrutiny of three potential consumers, who desire to witness the only satisfactory physiological measure of the male figure. He lowers his gaze as his penile response(s) are being examined by the purchasers of the unrealized display; thus, the scene reverberates with tension and possibility whether the nude male will be able to satisfy both scopophilic and carnal desires. In typical Orientalist painting from the nineteenth century, however, the female body has consistently been the site of desire, submission, and objectification. The original painting, from which Galustian quotes, is a depiction of an imagined human trafficking scene in Islamicate cultures that titillates the viewers by an enslaved woman’s exposed breasts and belly with the hint of a shaven vulva. In the case of Galustian’s image, she has flipped the script in the dialectic process that contends with the accepted norms of subconscious/conscious biases, which determine who is desirous and who is desirable.

In Galustian’s series of paintings—Quoting Gérôme (2001), Quoting Cormon (2001-02), Quoting Cercone (2002), and Quoting von Chlebowski (2002)—these works not only appropriate Orientalist paintings from the nineteenth century but also quote them directly in ways that one could identify the original sources they index. By quoting these paintings so accurately and by implementing a photorealist approach, Galustian’s appropriation becomes more multi-faceted than the standard postmodernist critique. As discussed in Patrick Greaney’s Quotational Practices (2014), there is a difference between postmodern appropriation and quotation, although certainly quotation would fall under the definition of appropriation, such as the work of Sherrie Levine (b. 1947). Indeed, with appropriation as a modus operandi, authority is questioned, but as both Craig Owens (1983) and Patricia J. Huntington (1998) have noted, this deconstructive strategy ultimately legitimizes the authority being challenged, or does not really topple hegemonic structures. Greaney posits, however, that contemporary artists use specific quotational practices as ways to further open up dialogue, to historicize repetition, and to provide another layer of tension: “[T]he past matters not only because of what actually happened but also because of the possibilities that were not realized and that still could be. Quotation evokes those possibilities. By repeating the past, artists and writers may be attempting to repeat that past’s unrealized futures.”1 What are the possibilities that Galustian’s paintings present in quoting Orientalist paintings? What is the Other story hinted at the first time around in the nineteenth century, only to be told by Galustian in the twenty-first century?

At first glance, Galustian’s work is reminiscent of Sylvia Sleigh’s The Turkish Bath (1973), but in Sleigh’s image, the viewer of the objectified men remains outside the frame. Any gaze could be implemented, be it heterosexual or queer, despite the positionality of the heterosexual female artist. Sleigh (1916-2010) also appropriates but does not quote exactly Ingres’ The Turkish Bath (1862), which illustrates female homosocial and homosexual closeness by showing women embracing and cavorting together in the nude, all for the delight of the male gaze. Sleigh reverses this by depicting a male homosocial harem based on a similar set of assumptions and desires as Ingres’ work. But instead of a heterosexual female gaze going wild with desire, her painting elicits laughter and perhaps awkwardness. The dialectic of heterosexual desire has conditioned men to be the subject and women the object, and even if women are having sex with other women, they remain the passive objects of desire and voyeurism for the male gaze. When Sleigh switches the positions of this dialectic, she shows that the reverse cannot simply occur,

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and the results do not readily stimulate heterosexual female desire in the most effective way.2 Ultimately, Sleigh’s intentions do succeed (even though female possession of the male body may not occur), because her goal was to make ideologically visible gender and sexual differences and disparities—not to investigate the histories and complexities of women’s dismissed desires.

In the case of Quoting Cercone, however, the agency of gazing not only lies with the viewer, but also with the three female positionalities inside the frame. In a brilliant reversal of classic scopophilic alignment, the viewer can relate more to the three women in the foreground rather than the two male subjectivities in the background. Both Laura Mulvey (1975) and E. Ann Kaplan (1983) have discussed that since women—whatever their positionalities may be—have been trained to gaze through the heteronormative male gaze via film, serials, and commercials, they will identify and sympathize with the male protagonist in film and art, consciously or not. Of course, this is not finite, and women filmmakers have sought to subvert this paradigm. Galustian’s painting demonstrates the successful twist that finally we see through women’s eyes. She has displaced the objectification of the female body onto the male. Because the scopohilic positions have been flipped, the viewer identifies—willingly or not—with the female onlookers, so that one gazes at the nude male through the eyes of the women; hence, one does not focus heavily on the bodies of the women themselves. The visual pleasure is toward the male nude. At least since the early modern period with the rise of great women artists, such as Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625) and Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), women artists have had to be conscious of their self-representations and the representations of women in general, because women’s bodies are always under surveillance and continually objectified, even now into the twenty-first century. Galustian has offered one solution here to an issue that women artists have been working on for centuries.

One may argue feebly that Galustian’s work is a form of reversed sexism, but this is not true. Paulo Freire wrote that in an oppressed society, those who are oppressed often adhere to and identify with the ideals and attitudes of their oppressors.3 It amazes and dismays that in a long global history of misogyny and oppression, Americans will still defend patriarchy, seen even in the most supposedly progressive of persons. In Representations of the Penis (1988), artist and art critic Mira Schor asked if phallic power could be separated from the biological penis, referring not only to the fine arts but also to American politics, and this question could still be asked seriously in 2020 in regard to the current political arena. Indeed, this collapsing of phallus and penis is the hallmark of an oppressive patriarchy that are still replicated in the US on a daily basis.

Similar to Sylvia Sleigh’s approach, Galustian calls the viewer’s attention to the centuries’ long awkwardness and even anger by both men and women at the reversal of the (un)natural order to expose female agency and desire. Galustian’s paintings are not manifestos for women to traffic and to enslave men, and I would even dare to say that many female viewers, who appreciate these paintings, do not want to oppress men either. Galustian’s work seems very much akin to Catherine Opie’s photographic series Being and Having (1991), in which the very prescriptions of gender, sexuality, and desire have power codes based on biology, but what defines biology as masculine or feminine, active or passive, or rough or soft have all been social prescriptions. Moreover, one can say any disparaging words about some sort of reversed sexism here, but the fact remains that the Orientalist paintings of great masters hang in major museums all over the word, drawing in over a million dollars per painting on the art market.4 If there is sexism on display, the art market is still paying a high price to showcase and to preserve the former.

Returning to Greaney’s argument about quotational practices, he claims that this approach historicizes repetition, which has the potential to open up dialogues about the past that have been left unsaid. When one studies the

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Middle East, and in this case, the nineteenth century, the field is rife with extant Orientalist thought, and that is because many of the theories, “facts,” and ideas about the Middle East put forward by European scholars, adventurers, and politicians were unquestioned and perpetuated until what they said became truths. In many ways, Orientalists were very well-trained and competent in their fields of study; they lived abroad for long spans of time and knew languages (both living and dead) on such a sophisticated level that far surpasses any research language training I have ever had. But I can say with firsthand experience working on nineteenth-century Iran, it has become an arduous task to separate truth from Orientalist fantasy. Some of these assumptions are so well entrenched that even scholars living and working in Iran and writing in Persian perpetuate them, so it is not just an obstacle in American scholarship but a global one.

Galustian’s positionality as a transnational Armenian-Iranian artist living in the United States vis-à-vis Orientalist legacies situates her work differently than Sleigh’s though Sleigh herself was Welsh, born in 1916 into the British Empire (so she had her own historical relationship to colonialism on various levels). When one is searching for histories that have been written for her as both a woman and person of color, and those histories have been written from points of view so profoundly shaped by Orientalism, what type of repetition does Galustian’s painting historicize and extrapolate on? Orientalist paintings and Galustian’s quoting of them are both fictions, and yet, there is truth in both of them. Certainly, there were slave markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions, and there were mistresses who had sex with their slaves and with partially-castrated eunuchs.

Did these historical situations happen in the ways that they are depicted in both cases? No, and therein lies the tension between truth, history, and representation.

Galustian’s works portray not only humor and fantasy, but they also illustrate truths about the omission and denial of Middle Eastern women’s—and in general, women’s—agency, sexual power, and desire. It is a reassessment of what is precisely at stake in the behavioral codes of racial and gendered constructions. What I mean to say is that in The Turkish Bath, Sleigh sets up a harem fantasy in reverse as a method to expose gender differences and inequalities, but the function of the painting ends there. In Galustian’s work, however, she shows the viewer what was possible, and that historical narratives have relied so much on an Orientalist point of view, that one has to actually break apart those narratives to ascertain a glimmer of truth—to potentially discover the lives of women who have been dismissed. To understand a shred of women’s lives in Iran and the Middle East, it requires an intensely critical mode of unravelling systems of meaning and the ways they overspill into the socio-cultural schemes, which put them into operation. It is then one realizes how much of the history of the Middle East and the history of women are so wrapped up within this matrix. I would even venture to say that everyone in the world has been seduced, betrayed, lied to, and victimized by the narratives of Orientalism, and it is a constant battle to break out of those patterns of belief and thinking. Indeed, Galustian’s paintings tell more truths than any Orientalist painting ever has.

1. Patrick Greaney, Quotational Practices: Repeating the Future in Contemporary Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), x.

2. For more on this problematic reversal in representing gender roles, see E. Ann Kaplan, “Is the Gaze Male?” in The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments, ed. Marc Furstenau (London: Routledge, 2010), 215.

3. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2005), 45-6.

4. Sotheby’s, “How to Sell Your Orientalist Painting with Sotheby’s”: https://www.sothebys.com/en/sell/paintings/european/orientalist (accessed October 6, 2020).

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Q u otin g Cer c o n e: E xa m i n i n g S l ave s

Ettore Cercone, Examining Slaves, oil on canvas, 30.5’ x 21.25”, 1890

Right: Quoting Cercone: Examing Slaves:, details

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Quoting Cercone: Examinig Slaves, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 72” x 54”, 2002

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Q u otin g Co r man : T h e D e p o s e d F avor i t e

Fernand Cormon, The Disposed Favorite, oil on canvas, 23.5”, x 21.25”, 1879

Right: Quoting Cormon: The Desposed Favorite, detail

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Quoting Corman: The Desposed Favorite, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 72” x 60”, 2002

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Q u otin g Gé r ô m e: Slave M a r ke t

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Slave Market, oil on canvas, 24.9”, x 33.3”, 1866, The Clark Art Institute, 1955.53

Right: Quoting Gérôme: Slave Market, detail

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Quoting Gérôme: Slave Market, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 46” x 61.5”, 2001

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Q u otin g Ch le bow s ki: P u rch a s i n g a S l ave

Stanislas von Chlebowski, Purchasing a Slave, oil on canvas, 28.5” x 36.75”, 1879

Right: Quoting Chlebowski Purchasing a Slave, detail

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Quoting Chlebowski Purchasing a Slave, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 46.5” x 62”, 2002

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T h e Ve iled Ser ies

Hidden Truths: The Veiled Series, pastel on paper 42” x 60”, 2003 (confiscated in Iran)

Veiled Truths, pastel on paper 44” x 69”, 2003 (confiscated in Iran)

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This is Not a Cigarette, colored pencil and pastel on paper 15.6” x 24”, 2003

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T h e Ve iled Ser ies

PLAyatolla, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 48” x 60”, 2017

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Miss Illegal Alien, oil on acrylic airbrushed canvas, 72” x 54”, 2020

Miss Illegal Alien, photograph, 2020 Concept, staging, presentation, and fashioning the performance: Abeline Galustian.

Photographer: Hilma Shahinian 29

A b e lina G a lu s t ia n C V

AC A D E M I C TRAIN IN G 2015

Ph.D., History of Art, University of California, Santa Barbara

2007

M.A., History of Art, University of California, Santa Barbara

2002

M.F.A., Studio Arts (2002), California State University, Los Angeles

1997

B.A., Fine Arts, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

SE LE CT E D A RT E X H IB ITION S 2017

She Loves, Honeypot Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2011

Reflections on the Gulf War, Al Marsam Al Hur, Kuwait City, Kuwait

2010

Abelina Galustian: Re-Orienting the body, Academy of Fine Arts, Yerevan, Armenia

2006

The Veiled Series, Women’s Center Gallery at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA

2004

Sightless Sites, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France

2003

feminine, feminist, female, Studio Soto, Boston, MA

Opening the Veil, Ferdowsi Art Center Gallery, Kish, Iran

Women Talking Back, an underground crypto-feminist art exhibition, Tehran, Iran

2002

Quoting the Orientalists, Adamson-Duvannes Galleries, Los Angeles, CA

Politicking the Canvas, Klagsbrun Gallery, New York

2001

Women of War, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

With Her Own Hands, Hilton Pasadena Furniture Exhibit, Pasadena, CA

2000

Las Poderosas, Museo de las Californias, Tijuana, Mexico

Re-figuring the Body, The Great Hall gallery, OCAD University, Toronto, ON, Canada

1998

Furniture by Women, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA

Organized Chaos, Kellogg Art Gallery, Cal-Poly Pomona, CA

1997

If Objects Could Talk, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, DE

PU B LI C CO L L E C TION S Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon Arab World Institute (Institut du Monde Arabe), Paris, France Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, California Museum of Contemporary Art (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo), San Luis Potosi, Mexico Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey State Museum of Painting and Sculpture, Ankara, Turkey

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CO NFE R E N C E PA P E RS A N D P RE S E N TAT IO NS 2012

“Armenian Photographers in Africa”, Institut du Monde Arabe: Paris, France

2010

“Armenians, Assyrians, and the End of the Ottoman Empire”, Chair & Discussant,

Middle East Studies Association: San Diego, CA

“The Substance of Orientalism in Visual Representation” , International Conference on the

Armenian Diaspora: Boston University, MA 2009

“Armenia of the Armenians?” , Chair: Yerevan State University, Armenia

“Orientalism and its Layers”, Armenian Academic Association’s International

Conference: Yerevan, Armenia 2008

“The Shapes and Colors of Orientalism” Columbia University: New York (2008)

2006

“Representing the Middle East in Western Mainstream Media”, Zayed University: United Arab Emirates

SI GNI FI C AN T C ON TRIB UTION S TO TH E FIELD Producer and host, KPFK Feminist Magazine Radio Program, Sampling of segments below: 2010

“Nazira Zeineddine: A Pioneer of Islamic Feminism,” Miriam Cooke

2009

“Global Perspectives on Gender Equality: Reversing the Gaze,” Naila Kabeer

2008

“Decolonizing the Lens of Power. Indigenous Films in North America,” Kerstin Knop

2007

“Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books,” Azar Nafisi

2006

“Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Life and Country,” Shirin Ebadi

“Girls of Riyadh,” Rajaa Alsanea

2005

“Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny,” Swati Chattopadhyay

“Women and Madness,” Phyllis Chesler

2004

“Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran,” Roya Hakakian

“Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America,” Firoozeh Dumas

2003

“With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,” Anne Brodsky

“Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society,”

Eleanor Abdella Doumato

“Rage Against the Veil: The Courageous Life and Death of an Islamic Dissident,” Parvin Darabi (2002)

I NVI T E D LE C TURE S 2017

“Womansword and Beyond”, Mount San-Antonio College: Walnut, California

2014

“Womansword: Quoting the Masters” , Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

2013

“Decolonizing Art: A Global Perspective” , State Center for the Arts Tijuana, Mexico

2012

“Delinking from the Colonial Matrix of Power”, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California: Baja California, Mexico

“The Beginnings of Photography in the Middle East”, Arab Image Foundation: Beirut, Lebanon

“Photography in the Middle East”, American University of Beirut: Lebanon

2011

“Diasporic Identities”, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“From Conception to Concept: Making Art Work”, Brooks Institute of Photography: Jefferson Campus, Santa Barbara

2010

“The Womansword & the Veil”, Brooks Institute: Ventura, California

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2009

“Orientalism in Visual Representation”, Pepperdine University: Malibu, California

“The Media and Orientalist Representations” , University of California: Santa Barbara

2008-09 “The Veiled Series and Neo-Orientalism”, University of California: Santa Barbara 2007

“The Womansword and Neo-Orientalism”, University of California: Santa Barbara (2007)

2006

“Orientalism in Visual Representation”, University of California: Santa Barbara

“Leadership on Many Levels” , Zayed University: United Arab Emirates

2005

“Leadership through Art”, Zayed University: United Arab Emirates

2004

“Representations of Women in Islam”, California State University, Long Beach

2003

“Orientalism in the Twenty-First Century Visual Culture”, University of Southern California: Los Angeles

I NT E RVI E W S A N D P ROF E S S ION AL A P P E AR A NCES 2017

“Transnational Identities”, SWANA Region Radio: South-West Asia & Northern Africa

2012

“Art and Authority”, Abu Dhabi TV: United Arab Emirates

2011

“Activist Artists from the Middle East”, Tokai Television Broadcasting Company: Nagoya, Japan

“Un Minuto con el Arte”, Azteca Siete: Mexico City, Mexico

2010

“Etudes Armeniennes: Un Colloque sur la Diaspora” (interview by Daphne Abeel), Nouvelles

D’Armenie Magazine: Paris, France

Featured in Asbarez Newspaper: Los Angeles, California

2008

Featured in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator: Boston, Massachusetts

Interview on WLIW/ PBS: Garden City, New York

2007

Interview in The Huffington Post: Los Angeles, California

Featured in The Santa Barbara Independent: Santa Barbara, California

2006

Interview on Citytv “The SexTV”: Toronto, Canada

2005

Interview on InTV: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

2004

Interview in Loudmouth Zine Journal: Los Angeles, California

2003

Interview in Feminist Magazine: North Hollywood, California

2002

Interview on C-Span/ TAPAN II: Los Angeles, California

SCHO LA R SH IP ON WOM AN S WORD S E R IES O F PA INT INGS 2014

“The Homoerotics of Orientalism: Mappings of Male Desire in Narratives of the Near and Middle

East,” Joseph Boone, Columbia University Press (2014) 2013

“Fueling Turkish Feminism,” Ozgun Iscen, Duke University: North Carolina

“Orientalism, Veiled and Unveiled,” Pino Blasone

2011

The American University in Cairo: Egypt

2009

“Feminist Perspectives on Orientalist Art,” Raya Khan University of Warwick: United Kingdom (2009)

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AWA R D S, G RA N TS , H ON ORS 2014

Senior Research, Grant Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR): U.S. Department of State

Mekhitarian Resident Scholarship San Lazzaro degli Armeni

2013

AVIM Educational Enhancement Stipend The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute: Armenia

Professional Fellows On-Demand Program Grant Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs:

Department of State I2012

Institute for Armenian Research travel grant Ermeni Araştırmaları Enstitüsü: Ankara, Turkey

2011

Research Grant Center for Eurasian Studies: Ankara, Turkey

2009-10 Research Travel Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara 2008

Graduate Opportunity Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award University of California, Santa Barbara

2006-07 Art History Departmental Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara 2007

Islamic Studies Travel Grant University of California, Santa Barbara

Graduate Fellowship Philip & Aida Siff Educational Foundation: Santa Barbara

2006

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship University of California, Los Angeles International Institute in

Arabic Studies

Islamic Studies Fellowship from the Center for Middle East Studies University of California, Santa Barbara:

Mallory Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara

2006-05 Graduate Enrichment Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara 2005

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Academic Year Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara

Departmental Regents Fellowship University of California, Santa Barbara

Zayed University Travel Grant United Arab Emirates

2000

Artist Grant Arpa Foundation for Film, Music & Art: Los Angeles, California

1999

Award of Excellence in Artistic Social Commentary Artfem: Los Angeles, California (1999)

M E M B E R SH IP S American Association of University Women College Art Association KPFK Women’s Coalition Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Middle Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies (MACLAS) National Women’s Studies Association LA N GUAG E S Native speaker: Interagency Language Roundtable Scale as of 2013

Spanish, French, Armenian, Farsi/Persian

Working Proficiency: Interagency Language Roundtable Scale as of 2013

Arabic, Italian

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Ackn ow le dge m en ts

California State University, Stanislaus

Dr. Ellen Junn, President

Dr. Kimberly Greer, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Depar tment of Ar t

Martin Azevedo, Associate Professor, Chair

Tricia Cooper, Lecturer

Dean De Cocker, Professor

James Deitz, Lecturer

Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor

Patrica Eshagh, Lecturer

Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor

Daniel Heskamp, Lecturer

Chad Hunter, Lecturer

Dr. Carmen Robbin, Professor

Ellen Roehne, Lecturer

Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor

Susan Stephenson, Associate Professor

Jake Weigel, Associate Professor

Meg Broderick, Administrative Support Assistant II

Kyle Rambatt, Equipment Technician II

University Ar t Galleries

Dean De Cocker, Director

School of the Ar ts

Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II

Abelina Galustian - Womansword and Beyond October 16–November 5, 2020 | Stan State Art Space, California State University, Stanislaus | 226 N. First St., Turlock, CA 95380 300 copies printed. Copyright © 2020 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN 978-1-940753-54-6 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

This exhibition and catalog have been funded by Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus.

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