This is how it all began

A simple flyer turned my life upside down when I was 27 years old. In a café in Munich, I discovered the announcement for a workshop: “Large-format painting with Jess Walter”. It was probably fate that I signed up for it, and this step was to radically change my world.

Growing up in a scientific family, I had not yet discovered my passion for art. I studied food chemistry (!) and my entire aspiration had been to live up to my family’s expectations. The workshops with Jess Walter marked a fundamental turning point: for the first time in my life I was doing something that put me in flow and gave me deep satisfaction (painting). What had been going on in my life up to that point was merely due to a sense of duty fulfillment.

After these indescribable experiences of happiness, I could no longer study food chemistry—all of a sudden, studying felt absolutely wrong. I was de-registered and tried to gain admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. However, the firmly rooted belief that art was unprofitable prevented me from concentrating fully on art professionally. So I became a graphic designer.

The urge for creative freedom has never let me go. Between 2011 and 2013, I studied artistic photography at the Prague School of Photography in Austria. I have been realizing various art projects in the fields of photography and design for a good ten years now.

During the lockdowns in the pandemic, I could no longer suppress the intense urge to express my themes through painting. In 2021, I resumed the interrupted path I had left behind years earlier in Munich: I enrolled in a three-year part-time degree course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolbermoor, under the guidance of Heribert Heindl, Helmut Geier and Nina Kohmann (graduation in November 2024).

From Tehran to the Allgäu

I was born into an Armenian family in Iran. Growing up in an environment of social and religious tensions, this time laid the foundation for my artistic expression early on. At the age of twenty, I fled to Germany with the initial goal of traveling on to the USA to visit my family. But life had other plans: I had planned to stay in Munich for a single night, but a “chance” encounter at Munich airport meant that I stayed in Munich for a whole 29 years. After eleven years in Lower Franconia, I have been living and working in the beautiful town of Memmingen in Allgäu since the summer of 2024.

My artistic expression

My life themes are identity, culture and history. I have been exploring these exciting fields for myself ever since I was able to think for myself. My art is the best way to express my experiences, thoughts and emotions on this path.

Identity

Who am I? What am I doing here? Why am I here? When I was nine years old, I told my class that I was actually Japanese and that my family was a disguise. I told them that my parents had an invisible glue that they used to fix my eyes so that my real origin remained hidden.

For many years, I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. That has long since changed, but the search for me has remained: Who am I really really? Who is my soul? What of me is authentic, what is conditioned? With every brushstroke, I uncover a little more Catherine, and I am infinitely grateful for every little insight.

Culture

Especially in Islamic countries, Armenians live in a more or less closed Christian community. I grew up in an Armenian neighborhood in the middle of Tehran, a city of millions, but I only had Armenian friends until I was 15. I longed to immerse myself more deeply in Persian culture and to have Persian friends. In addition, my grandmother, who had passed away long before I was born, was from Belarus. I even inherited her first name (she was called Katarina). This mixture of religion, ethnicity and homeland intensified my search for identity even more.

How does the culture in which we grew up influence our personality, our character and our preferences? I have lived in Germany for so long now, I think and dream in German, my daughter is German, and yet my soul is Persian (not Armenian). How does that come about?

History

I have always been fascinated by history. Whether it’s my own history (childhood, family, life), the history of my people (the Armenian genocide), the history of my country of birth (Iran) or the history of my adopted country, Germany. My pictures are created in the field of tension between forgiveness, processing, reconciliation and remembrance.