Memory Formations: The Resurrections of Garo Hakimian
Written by Alexia Marmara
Published on May 16th, 2025
‘First we’re going to start… with the horns.’ Garo Hakimian’s opening words in his Private Museums Tour residency summon the audience and pave the way for the speaker’s non-negligible force, caution and his undeniable savvy. As if in a fevered dance with his paper canvas, he kicks to the side and leans onto his pastel, surrounded and cushioned by the rest of his works that have bled onto the floor. From this frenzied position, the artist fabricates a being, scratches colour and lines over it, and presses his savoir-faire onto a world he is orchestrating. Just as we think we’ve understood what’s in front of us, he scrapes any trace of his process but returns to the task with tenderness, a dance his sister Nanor likens to the witnessing of war and prayer. In his own words, Garo paints his brain, and he does so by effortlessly demonstrating the constant flux that is the arborescence of a human mind.
As Garo circles the canvas, edging from side to side and upside down, he lets us in on a secret: the only certainty is mutation.
At the core of all his work lies the theme of oscillating identity, and within that, healing. Though deeply personal, encoded with the narratives swinging between his Armenian heritage, his family and the vibrant Montreal art scene, he wrestles with ghosts past and present, giving space to all he has enshrouded with personal care and all that has engulfed him. The transformative power of his creativity and the mirroring of his own fluctuating experience are displayed within the constant changes and movements of his creations through the incision of grief. He depicts his own intuitive understanding of his lived experience and becomes a creator whistling and sculpting the world into formation, letting it flow onto whichever canvas he deems fit. He welcomes mess, lawlessness and confusion as living beings take on all sorts of shapes, forms, fights and meanings: ‘it might become a horse… or a girl…’ Though ‘it’s a dangerous sport’, the viewer feels safe in the unpredictability of the transformation. As Garo circles the canvas, edging from side to side and upside down, he lets us in on a secret: the only certainty is mutation.
Recovery is the power Hakimian furiously injects into his journey. With his work serving as a safeguarding vessel, the sheets and drips of paint, marks of charcoal, and thickness of pastels are cast as covers that blanket his past to soften his journey forward. The chorus of past generations and the music of the present silently scream into each of his chosen shapes. When asked about the makeup of his creative process, Nanor Hakimian examines what guides her brother the most: ‘Garo’s Armenian heritage runs deep, it’s not just a part of him, it shapes him. Our family has always carried both the weight and the pride of being Armenian. a people who’ve endured unimaginable loss, especially through the genocide of 1915, and yet have preserved their culture with fierce resilience. That collective memory, paired with the richness of our Armenian Orthodox faith, pulses through everything Garo creates even if it’s not always overt. You see it in the intensity of his colors, the emotional layering of his work, and the profound soul that emerges from his canvases.’ Suddenly, just as fast as the bed was made, the blankets are whisked off, new patchwork is added, and the story continues to write itself: Garo Hakimian tricks our comfort and adds to the endlessly unfinished product.
“Our family has always carried both the weight and the pride of being Armenian. a people who’ve endured unimaginable loss, especially through the genocide of 1915, and yet have preserved their culture with fierce resilience. That collective memory, paired with the richness of our Armenian Orthodox faith, pulses through everything Garo creates even if it’s not always overt.”
Material currents are unrestricted in the artist’s process. His Montreal studio is filled with canvases and walls covered in the continuity of the skin of the painting. A lucky visit enables a first hand experience of the artist’s demonstration of a unifying process, one that goes beyond his œuvre. His desire for artistic communion at all angles echoes the work of his late father who championed, preserved and promoted the work of Armenian artists, forever aware of their importance within the creative canon. With the passing of this precious mentor, Garo continues his father’s mission by ‘honoring where we come from while trying to make sense of everything we’ve lived through.’
There is no casual observation of what hangs on the gallery walls, but rather an amalgamation of shifting energies, welded together with compassion and a palpable trust in the power of memory.
Unlike a snake shedding skin for rebirth, Garo renews and grieves by adding, spinning and searching for new meaning within his brushstrokes. Beyond the studio walls, Hakimian’s brain travels worldwide with Instagram becoming his welcoming stage. It’s as though the wider public has recognised itself on the artist’s quest to refurbish his every day. His embracing of contemporary times led to an enthusiasm for the interconnectedness of social media and pushed him to his current show, his first international exposition. Layers of Transformative Journeys at Space776 solidifies, in the curator Maria Yoon’s own words, ‘the energy we exchange when we’re together, much like how a spider feeds off vibrations in its web. Living in New York City, I’m very attuned to energy, and Garo Hakimian’s artwork embodies that. His purity in approaching art is evident; he is a true working artist who follows his intuition and maintains a naïve spirit while creating his masterpieces.’ There is no casual observation of what hangs on the gallery walls, but rather an amalgamation of shifting energies, welded together with compassion and a palpable trust in the power of memory. With profound admiration for her brother, Nanor Hakimian details his individuality: ‘There’s a violence to his process, a kind of exorcism. He paints with his whole body, like he’s trying to claw something ancient out of himself. Montreal gave him the walls to hang it on — but the storm? That comes from deeper. From bloodlines. From loss. From Armenia.’
With whichever magic wand he choses, be it spray paint, charcoal or pastel, he exercises his evolutive muscle to welcome the bumps in the trajectory the fates have in store for him. ‘I didn’t choose painting, painting chose me,” and with the decisive movement of a maestro, with one eye closed his hand jolts, and the horns become the horse,the girl, the ghosts… or the viewer. ‘Why would I stop? I add and transform. I go everywhere.’ The fragments and vignettes of his experience are loaded with dynamism and his colours synonymous with the firm belief in accessing, facing, and embracing danger in order to move forth. Garo Hakimian has relinquished control in accessing his subconscious, and in so doing, defames any original restrictions, forever conceptualising a different end.
Alexia Marmara is a UK based researcher, archivist, artist and curator specialising in uncovering and celebrating the unsung. She curates and programmes at The Horse Hospital in London and is a recipient of The Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Research Grant.