Galerie Les filles du calvaire is featuring the work of photographer Diana Markosian in an exhibition entitled Santa Barbara. She was first exhibited at MoMa in San Francisco, ICP in New York, FOMU in Antwerp, and Images Vevey in Switzerland. .
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, one of the first American television programs to be broadcast in Russia was called Santa Barbara. The photographer’s family looked at this soap opera as a window on the world and on the American dream, defined as «a country in which life would be better, richer and fuller for everyone» by the writer James Truslow Adams in his novel Epic of America (1931). This dream was indeed for many a source of hope and renewal. The possibility of leaving and achieving the impossible. However, this quest was not always made of joys but sometimes of sufferings and sacrifices: leaving relatives, friends, culture and precious roots. The artist thus decides to leave for California and succeeds thanks to the sacrifices of her mother.
Santa Barbara, with its special aura, is undoubtedly a legendary place for her family. This exhibition documents, reconstructs, and re-examines both the Russia and the United States of her childhood, a true photographic fable between dream and reality.
« Santa Barbara par Diana Markosian » Galerie Les filles du calvaire
17, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Paris 3e
Du 28 octobre au 17 décembre 2022
Flora Di Carlo