Diana Markosian: Father

How do we repair the ruptures in our lives? How do we reconcile with the time lost? When we feel severed – cut off, split, disconnected –, taken from our most visceral connections, a longing emerges — a search for wholeness. We seek to bridge the emotional void, to mend the broken parts in ourselves. It takes courage to go deep inside ourselves, to confront our deepest wounds, and to transform them into something else — until they become stories, both integrated yet detached, able to live on on their own, touching others who encounter them.

This is what Diana Markosian’s work does for me. It reminds me of the essential role of art – art that feels courageous and vulnerable – as a means of making sense of ourselves, and weaving together the fragmented parts within us. When shared with the world, it ripples outward, connecting us in ways we never expected.

Markosian’s story begins when she was seven, and mother took her and her brother on a sudden trip to the US, leaving behind their father without saying goodbye. In her first monograph, Santa Barbara (2020), the artist reconstructs this migration from post-Soviet Russia to 1990s America through her mother’s eyes, exploring the sacrifices made for a better life. In the process, her mother erased their past — literally cutting Markosian’s father out of family photos, as if their old life had never existed.

Meanwhile, her father spent fifteen years searching for his children, unaware of their whereabouts. Then, after all those years of separation, Markosian and her brother finally stood in front of his door in Armenia. For the next decade, she travelled to Armenia, spending time with him at his home — trying to find what had been lost.

I visited Markosian’s exhibition Father at Foam in Amsterdam, an intimate attempt at reconnection after a decade and a half of estrangement. The exhibition unfolds across four rooms, tracing the evolving relationship between the artist and her father through documentary photographs, archival material, personal keepsakes, film, and diary writings. It begins with The Stranger, where Markosian reflects on her attempt to understand a man who had become unfamiliar to her, and to make sense of a relationship shaped by absence and longing.

The walls are lines with framed ‘intact’ family photos, portraying a seemingly whole and happy family.  Alongside these, intimate documentary-style photos offer a window into her father’s world, capturing quiet moments of him and her grandfather at home. In this space, both familiar and foreign, Markosian pieces together a connection to her past. “It felt like a museum of my childhood. All our family pictures were there, my grandmother’s polka dot tins line the kitchen shelf, even my brother’s childhood toys are tucked away in my father’s closet.”

The next room reveals her father’s fifteen-year search for his children, with newspaper clippings and hundreds of letters covering the walls. One of the most moving works is a video of her father carefully opening a small suitcase — a time capsule of love and longing. Inside are cherished remnants of his children’s absence: photographs, a shirt for his future son’s wedding, and the countless letters and newspaper clippings that marked his search.

The third room, adorned with golden floral wallpaper, displays photographs that Markosian and her father created together — the camera serving as a therapeutic tool to create the memories that they never had, through simple, everyday moments, like sharing breakfast. Alongside these images, diary excerpts from both of them, capturing their efforts to rebuild their relationship.

The final room closes with a film, showing Markosian and her father as they continue to rebuild their relationship. Together, they search for traces of the father and daughter they once were, while learning to navigate their relationship in the present. As they reconnect, both confront old wounds and unspoken emotions, while slowly getting to know each other anew.

Anthropologist Tim Ingold speaks of “sharing time” (Tim Ingold, Sharing Time: The Work of Art in a Possible World, lecture at Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, 2025) in the creation of art, emphasising that meaning emerges from this shared experience. Art holds a regenerative power — it can heal both forward and backward, transforming and reimagining what was lost. This is exactly what Markosian does. She interrupts the rupture, bridging the disconnect — not to erase the past, because lost time cannot be reclaimed, but to initiate a healing attempt. This act of vulnerability and courage shows how healing extends beyond their own relationship. It ripples outward, transmuting into something larger.

Ingold’s concept of “sharing time” resonates deeply in Markosian’s work. What she and her father embark on is a sharing of lived time, navigating intimacy and absence. Each step they take together becomes part of a new story. The exhibition comes full circle, closing with the same photograph with which it begins. At the entrance, a family portrait of Diana and her parents is displayed — her mother’s version, where her father has been cut out, erasing his presence. The exhibition ends with the same portrait, but this time, it is her father’s copy — one where the family remains intact.