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In 1915 my grandmother, Maria Ahanikovna Voskanian (born Stepanian), was only seven years old. Her father (my great grandfather, Ahanik Stepanian) managed to take his sick wife and three little daughters from the city of Kars to the south of Russia.

Both my grandmothers are survivors of the Armenian Genocide, as was my husband’s grandmother. All three women suffered from depression throughout their adult lives. Neither of my parents knew their grandparents.

My grandfather died before I was born, yet even today his spirit guides me and gives me strength. His account of the Genocide in his small town in Western Armenia is an amazing read.

Armenia is in my name – Armenoui. Even though I am far away from the historical homeland of my father’s family, I am Armenian and I feel Armenian. Our shared experiences, our memories of exile, my family’s stories… all these have emerged through my art. I am a visual artist, and my work inspired by my family’s past explores the concepts of trauma, remembering and forgetting.

Both my paternal and maternal great grandfathers escaped the Genocide. They lived in the Ottoman Empire back then and were caught in the midst when the violence erupted. Too many people helped them to be able to count and name them all - from random strangers to Russian medical personnel and American aid workers.

In order to lay the ground for reconciliation between two parties every human being has to take the risk of admitting their guilt, no matter how small or how big. Otherwise, it may never happen. I am a third generation Armenian, but the pain of my grandparents is my pain, it is in my subconscious. I fall asleep and wake up with this pain in my heart.

“What my nation and my family went through was a great tragedy. Some of those people were still alive when I was born – the people I knew and loved, such as my great-grandmother. The fact that some countries that call themselves democracies – and some big ones among them, too – did not admit this fact is a complete injustice. As long as the evil is not named as such, there is always the risk of it coming back.”

Twenty-one years after the death of her grandmother, Valérie Toranian – an influential French feminist and an editor at La Revue des Deux Mondes – swapped journalism for literature, in order to bring that “stranger” back to life in a novel that tries to make some sense of surviving the unspeakable.

I am a proud Armenian and I am proud to have a wonderful Armenian son named Haroot. I consider myself a victim of the Armenian Genocide because I do not know anything about my roots. All my relatives except my grandparents were massacred by the Turks.

If I were given the chance to be born again into another nationality, I would choose to be Armenian again! My heritage provides me with a sense of continuity from ancient ties to the past and into a future bright with hope and excitement. The Armenian culture is unique beacuse it embraces ideas from other cultures while staunchly holding on to its own roots. The panoply of history and traditions surrounding my heritage is priceless and must be protected like a treasure.