Families Lost

Eileen Claveloux’s new UMass exhibit features a captivating array of faces, all connected through trauma and loss. Each of Claveloux’s subjects is descended from a family with one or more ancestors among the 1.5 million who perished in the Armenian Genocide — a systemic extermination by the Ottoman government, from 1915 to 1917, that is, in large part, forgotten to world history. “My grandmother was a survivor,” says Claveloux, who began this series in 2005, “and the stories and history were silenced in our family. A relative’s recent research has revealed that over 70 members of my grandmother’s family died as a result of the genocide and massacres that took place both before and after the actual genocide. My father and his generation had never been told of the existence of these family members.”

Eileen Claveloux — Diasporan Portraits: Oct. 12 – Nov. 9. University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMass Fine Arts Center, 155 Presidents Dr., Amherst. fac.umass.edu.

— Hunter Styles