Synergy with Atiba T. Edwards and Hagop Belian

What did you learn about your art practice during your reduced social interactions these past few months?

I learned that art can be whatever I want it to be. It can be my healer, my sanity, my salvation, my escape but most of all it is my teacher because of its ability to reflect back to me my own truth and honesty - showing me exactly where I am at. It helps me express more than words can about how I am feeling and what I believe in. It is also very humbling to experience creativity as an energy that comes through to collaborate with me in the expression of a feeling. Access to that infinite field is something that is granted and therefore something that needs to be respected.

How do you see the intersection of creating art and the benefit of people seeing your art in person?

There is definitely a different type of intimacy that happens when experiencing art in person. A lot of the subtle nuances get lost in a photo or through the digital distributions of the artwork. Artworks are portals to different worlds and dimensions. Experiencing artwork in person, you experience and interact with the energy that emanates from the work. There are also lots of details such as depth, layers and marks that get lost in the digital realm. Again, there are moments that the artists has with the work that leaves a residue of energy, like an imprint of intention that can only be felt in the presence of the work.

Your works often are compositions of many other forms into one singular one. Can you talk a bit more about that process and source of inspirations that drive this style?

For me life is about synergy, the sum that is greater than the sum of its part is a motto that ripples through so many aspects of who I am and what I do. Every strong organization or team is comprised of many individuals working together to form a dynamic and strong entity. Since my work is about humans meeting their spirit animal, there is an underlying theme of transformation and synthesis that fuses together different aspects of rebirth and evolution. This not only takes form visually but also mentally and metaphysically.

The source materials of my work come from books that date anywhere from 1500’s-1800’s.

Before humankind learned to read we depended on word of mouth or on visual symbols to express meaning, to learn, and to communicate ideas. By using images from different centuries, the dialogue of communication is deeper and more layered because it has spanned a multitude of generations and has the potential to resonate with more people and cultures.

There is also the synergy of collaborating with artists of the past. When I use parts of an artist’s work, It feels like a natural exchange. The artist gets to be seen again and communicate their work with newer generations and have an opportunity to have their work placed in a new context: what you could call a “recycling of history.”

How did synergy manifest itself with your recent works?

It was very interesting how synergy manifested itself in my latest collection because it really caught me by surprise. I knew that the main exploration of the body of work was going to be in color.

All the images came from different sources of colored pages and created a cohesive story and expression. It was all working great but I felt there was a missing link in some of the pieces.

I was reading a book on shamanism and there was a section talking about how one of the ways a shaman infuses their energy into an object is by weaving and embroidering their intention with prayer and turning the item into a power object.

The embroidery becomes a physical manifestation of the work from the other dimensions.

I realized that I needed to literally and physically connect the layers and that the color does not need to necessarily come from an image or any sort of pigment.

The embroidery was a new technique that I had to learn and it took me a second to find my groove with it and understand its nature and how it wanted to work within my narrative.

It pushed me into having more ceremonial interactions with the pieces and on some level leave more of myself into the work, in some cases even my own blood from the needle punctures.

How can art play a role in blurring or removing the line between fantasy and reality?

Imagination is the key ingredient to the expansion and advancement of our world because of its ability to create the possibility of hope. And where there is hope there is an opportunity for transformation and change.

Art allows us to exercise the muscle of imagination to help people break down the walls of separation and gain new perspective on life in the hopes of planting the seeds of fantasy in the realm of reality allowing the synthesis to create a new vision for a better and diverse world.

Complete the phrase “Art is...”

Art is power!

View more of Hagops work at on Instagram @madeofhagop or on his webiste: www.madeofhagop.com.