AMARIS
Untitled
2022
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Left painting (orange):
Libertad, cuán hermoso que fueres
Libertad, luz que llena mi ansiedad.
Pero un día te perdí
y hoy te vuelvo a recobrar
hoy defiendo lo que tú me das
Mumi - 1989
(English)
Freedom, how beautiful you are
Freedom , light that impregnates my anxiety
Yet I lost you one day
And today I get you back
Now I defend what you provide
Right painting (blue):
As you said maybe we succeeded in creating and recreating our lives, but we lost a lot of time tending our wounds while we search eagerly to find Zaatar زعتر. and to listen to من قلبي سلام لبيروت.
Visual Description: Our roots and origins give us the power of all our ancestors. The stories of resilience that preceded ours explain the values in our families. Every struggle, lesson, anger, problem, solution, ups and downs, and the happiness after every success. How many of those stories do we know? Have we asked our grandparents or parents for their stories? This piece portraits how two different stories, whom each lived contrasting struggles, built the foundation for their child, represented with the colorful mountains and skies as a combination of all the stories that preceded her. The bottom paintings represent the journey before they met, and the tree in the middle portrays how this two ancestral origins came together and created a new legacy.My ancestors travelled the world looking for opportunities; they failed several times, which is why they were able to succeed at last... We are neither the first nor the last struggling with problems. We are here thanks to the thousands of stories that preceded us. The knowledge we need for our future may be in our past and the answers we seek outside may be already in us, in our story, in our family.
ARTIST | Amaris //Helen Batchoun-Riveros
She/Her
Instagram: @helen_batchounr
Amaris, formally known as Helen, is a Chilean/Lebanese artist and photographer based in Toronto.I am interested in the transgressive possibilities of poetry and art as spaces where emotions/histories can be (re)told. Using these mediums to expand my passion for human rights + an intersectional approach to racial and gender justice. Art as an expression for unity and connection.
