Vartan Avakian's 'Treasure Maps for Haunting Landscapes' Explores Armenian Gold Myth

Vartan Avakian's exhibition 'A Curse that Turns Gold into Ladybugs' at Marfa' Projects in Beirut presents his series 'Treasure Maps for Haunting Landscapes', which investigates the enduring myth of buried Armenian gold in Turkey. The project originated from a memory book given to Avakian by his great-aunt, detailing his ancestral village in the Ottoman Empire. Using the book, he geolocated the area and encountered a parallel universe where hand-drawn Armenian maps are used by Turkish treasure hunters seeking hidden wealth. Anthropologists Alice von Bieberstein and Anoush Tamar Suni have documented this phenomenon, linking it to the ongoing legacy of dispossession from the Armenian Genocide. In 2022, Kadir Janpolat of the nationalist Ottoman Hearths claimed Armenian gold could boost Turkey's economy tenfold, a mathematically absurd assertion. The exhibition includes cyanotype maps redrawn by Avakian and Ghassan Halawani, supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and TAP's relief residency. The works transform maps of remembrance into tools for exposing historical violence.