Looking At The Armenian Genocide Through the Lens of Art

April 24, 2015 marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915, roughly seven hundred Armenians from Constantinople were massacred by the Young Turks, a nationalistic political movement that wanted to make the Ottoman Empire a country organized around a constitutional government.

This terrifying moment provided the impetus for the event that we call the Armenian Genocide, which violently ended the lives of a total of approximately 1.3 million people. The twentieth century began with this shameful crime against humanity, which predated the Holocaust by twenty-five years. Even today, however, there exists a strong current of denial and disbelief about the massacre Armenians endured. Turkey has never formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, and continuously makes efforts to belittle the extent of the tragedy, minimizing the total number of deaths in an arbitrary and conspicuous manner.