Weaving Images: Textile, Displacement, and Reframing the Borders of Visual Culture

Abstract

In this chapter Baronian illuminates how Armenian visual culture involves a wide range of forms and media beyond architecture, folk arts, and crafts. Therefore, she considers how Armenian visual culture—broadly defined—enables us to see and to penetrate many salient aspects of that culture and its legacy that would otherwise remain unseen. In this regard, Baronian challenges scholars to move beyond the iconic celebration of Armenia’s rich cultural heritage in order to disclose its plural signification beyond the Armenian territory, be it physical, affective, or imaginary. Finally, to tie the disparate threads of a heterogeneous visual culture together, this chapter introduces the idea of textile, both in a literal and figurative fashion. Textile, as an encompassing and versatile motif, constitutes and animates diasporic remembering practices.