Patterns of Genocide

19.75" x 27.5"
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

Religious Nationalism: Malakha d'Mara d'Gulpane

19.75" x 27.5"
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

(small copy)
The village of Golpashan, in Urmiyah, Iran, was exclusively Assyrian prior to WWI. It came under attack by Kurdish and Turkish Muslims from 1914–1918. Girls and women were carried off. Men were killed.

Rebuilt in the 1920s, the village was pillaged again in WWII. Hardier families remained in the area holding fast to the millennia-long belief that Urmiyah was their home. Only a fraction of the early 20thC population stayed through the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the present.

The church of Mar Gevargiz, built in 1869, was restored in 2001 with the help of the existing community and the Diaspora.
Since then, strict enforcement of Shari’a law and severe religious nationalism has led to discrimination against Assyrians and other minorities, including Armenians, Zoroastrians and Bahais.

Excepts from “Immigration and Adjustment: Assyrian Family Records”

College Art Association's 2006 MFA Exhibition

Form Follows Function:
A Design of An Assyrian Identity
Feb 21–24, 2006
MassArt | Godline Gallery
Boston, MA

"The best surprise was Sharokin Betgevargiz's politicized posters (she was in the graphic-design gallery) of the history of the Assyrian people in the twentieth century. Her use of images and text, both in English detailing the abuses heaped on the Assyrians by the Kurds and Arabs and in the Assyrian (Aramaic) language, whose beauty matches the calligraphy of Arabic and Hebrew words."

- Excerpts from www.collegeart.org “CAA Regional MFA Exhibition” by Christopher Howard, February 24, 2006