A home that keeps shifting

With the year behind us, we reflect on all that appeared and disappeared, taking time to reconnect with family, home and whatever gives us warmth. For Armenians, the idea of home is rarely uncomplicated. History has turned it into something portable, something remembered more often than inhabited. For us, home is often not just a physical location, but a collection of fragments that hold the emotional geography of our past and roots. These themes shaped much of 2025 for Sarko Meené, an Armenian-born artist based between Armenia and New York. Her exhibitions over the past year repeatedly returned to subjects familiar to many Armenians living between places. "What is home, really? The answers can be endless, and most of them rarely touch geographic borders — they are more part of our emotional map,” Meené shared with the Weekly. "Home can be a familiar sound or smell, the people who make you feel loved, familiar routines that give you a sense of safety. During her travels, she noted, any Armenian word — especially "jan” — gives her a sense of belonging, a sense of home. "When you expand the idea of home through small details, you see how it unexpectedly becomes very personal and portable, something strong enough to endure anything and never fade.” she continued. "Exploring this topic took me through four exhibitions this year.” These ideas were reflected in a group exhibition, titled Sense of Belonging, organized by Chayul Collective and hosted at the Nobu Los Cabos Hotel in Mexico. There, Meené presented Identity — metal installations of layered fingerprints — alongside mosaic pieces collectively titled Road to Self. Displayed in a hotel, a space designed for temporary stays, the works echoed a state familiar to the Armenian diaspora: connection in places where permanence is uncertain. The same questions surfaced in New York during Meené’s three-month solo exhibition Safe At Home, a collaboration with Carl Hansen & Søn, a family-owned Danish furniture company. More than 80 works spread across three floors explored identity and belonging. Created from materials suggesting both fragility and endurance, the pieces were designed to provoke reflection. "I wasn’t trying to define home as a location or limit the idea of identity to our physical being,” Meené stated. "I wanted to understand how the idea of it keeps shifting, and how our perception changes everything.” Meené places strong value on human connection, seeing it as essential to shaping not only how we feel, but how we relate to the world. Do we feel safe or threatened? Whole everywhere, or like fragments that fit only in certain spaces? This philosophy took its clearest form in People Change People, one of Meené’s solo exhibitions in 2025. Hosted in the high desert of Joshua Tree, California, the show unfolded as a large-scale installation composed of 111 small watercolors, light sculptures made from metal mesh and documentary films. The title served as both a statement and an invitation. "Sometimes, changing the world takes only one thing: meeting one person, or provoking a change in someone and letting them take it from there,” she explained. "My show was intended as a safe space for people looking for that shift.” She added that curating the exhibition alone was challenging. Her goal was to present a large-scale body of work — watercolors, large canvases, light installations and documentary films — while leaving space for viewers to breathe. Though the idea of pause is central to her artistic philosophy, Meené rarely allows herself one. And 2025 was no exception. Following exhibitions across the Americas, she continued her work in Europe. Her solo show at Rhinoceros Roma, a palazzo owned by the Fendi Foundation, featured 44 works, including a large-scale installation titled LIFE. All pieces were created at Meené’s open-air studio in the courtyard during her stay, making the exhibition a unique collaboration with the space. For Armenian audiences, the artist’s international trajectory resonates not only as professional success, but as a familiar narrative — one in which movement, memory and the search for belonging remain closely intertwined. As Meené’s work continues to travel across geographies, it asks something simple but essential of its viewers: to slow down, to notice where they feel rooted and where they don’t and to question what "home” means in their own lives. Perhaps the invitation is not to find a final answer, but to stay open to the quiet shifts that shape who we are. In March 2026, Meené will present her works at the London Contemporary Art Fair in an exhibition represented by Antikyan Gallery. To follow along Sarko Meené’s artistic journey, check out her Instagram page @sarkomeene. All photos are courtesy of Sarko Meené unless otherwise noted.

A home that keeps shifting

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Ella Kanegarian Berberian

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This story is FREE for you...

Ella Kanegarian Berberian

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