ARDZIV: Painting Memory, Holding Beauty and Fragility

Lucy Poshoghlian, known artistically as ARDZIV - meaning Eagle in Armenian - is a Lebanese-Armenian painter whose work moves through memory, emotion, identity, and the quiet traces of human experience.

Her artistic name is itself an expression of belonging. By choosing ARDZIV and signing her works in both English and Armenian, she carries her Armenian identity visibly into her practice, introducing Armenian letters into homes and spaces around the world.

Over the years, ARDZIV has developed a distinctive visual language shaped by modern artistic influences, expressive compositions, layered textures, and a deeply intuitive relationship with colour. Her career has taken her across Lebanon, France, and the United States, through both solo and collective exhibitions. In 2008, her oil painting Puzzle received the “Best Design & Best Colour” prize at Gallery Mona Lisa in Paris. Her work has since appeared in exhibitions and venues including the Carrousel du Louvre, Château d’Auvers, Art District Gemmayze, the German Cultural Centre, and Kulturnest.

Today, her paintings can be found at Quadra Framing Gallery in the United States, Art District Gemmayze in Lebanon, Artscoops online, SAYA in Faqra, and through Kulturnest.

ARDZIV has been part of the Kulturnest family for some time, and we are both happy and honoured to continue sharing her work. Beyond the vibrancy that first draws the eye, her paintings carry something quieter: nostalgia, vulnerability, longing, silence, and the tension between what remains present and what has already begun to disappear.

For ARDZIV, a painting does not need to explain everything. It can suggest. It can hold a feeling without resolving it. It can carry tenderness and melancholy at once.

Her relationship with Lebanon and her wider diasporic and multicultural experience add another dimension to this language. Beauty exists alongside fragility; belonging alongside displacement; memory alongside absence. Rather than offering fixed narratives, her paintings create emotional spaces that viewers can enter with their own histories.

Through this conversation, Kulturnest invites readers to discover the emotional world behind ARDZIV’s canvases - one shaped not simply by what she paints, but by what she chooses to leave open.

Interview

Kulturnest: Can you introduce yourself through your artistic journey rather than your biography? What key moments or shifts have shaped your practice?

ARDZIV: My artistic journey began long before I consciously called myself an artist. Painting became a way for me to translate emotions, memories, and human experiences that words could not fully contain.

Over time, I realized that my work was deeply connected to memory, nostalgia, silence, and the emotional traces people leave behind.

One of the important shifts in my practice was understanding that art did not need to explain everything literally. I became more interested in atmosphere, emotion, and suggestion rather than direct narration.

Another important moment was exhibiting my work publicly and seeing how viewers connected their own stories to the paintings. That exchange made me understand that art becomes complete through the emotions it awakens in others.

Living through instability, uncertainty, and emotional contrasts in Lebanon also shaped my sensitivity as an artist. It taught me to observe details and to hold beauty and fragility in the same space.

Kulturnest: How would you describe your artistic language - your mediums, techniques, and way of working? What draws you to these forms of expression?

ARDZIV: My artistic language is rooted in emotion and atmosphere. I mainly work through painting, using layered textures, contrasts of light and shadow, and expressive compositions that allow emotion to emerge gradually.

I am drawn to works that feel intimate and cinematic at the same time - where silence, colour, and gesture can speak as strongly as figures or objects.

I often approach painting intuitively. Rather than following a rigid plan, I allow the work to evolve organically through layers, marks, and emotional reactions during the process.

I am especially drawn to forms of expression that leave space for interpretation because I want viewers to enter the work with their own memories and emotions.

What attracts me most to painting is its ability to preserve feelings that are otherwise fleeting. A painting can hold tension, tenderness, nostalgia, or absence all at once.

Kulturnest: What themes, questions, or inner tensions are currently driving your work? Are there ideas you find yourself returning to?

ARDZIV: I find myself constantly returning to themes of memory, emotional displacement, longing, human vulnerability, and the invisible emotional weight people carry.

I am interested in the tension between presence and absence - what remains unsaid, what fades, and what survives emotionally despite time or distance.

Another recurring idea in my work is the relationship between beauty and melancholy. I am drawn to moments that feel delicate yet emotionally charged, where stillness can contain an entire emotional narrative.

I also reflect often on identity and emotional belonging, especially within societies marked by instability and constant transformation.

My work is less about providing answers and more about creating emotional spaces where viewers can pause, reflect, and reconnect with their own inner experiences.Kulturnest: Can you walk us through your creative process - from the first impulse to the final piece? What part of this process feels most essential to you?

ARDZIV: The process usually begins with an emotional impulse rather than a fixed image.

Sometimes it starts from a memory, a mood, a fragment of music, a face, or even a passing feeling that stays with me. I spend time observing that emotion internally before translating it visually.

Once I begin painting, the work develops through intuition and layering. I rarely try to control everything from the beginning because I believe the painting reveals itself gradually.

There is often a dialogue between control and spontaneity throughout the process.

The most essential part for me is the moment when the work begins to carry emotional truth—when it stops feeling like an image and starts feeling alive.

That moment cannot be forced. It comes through patience, vulnerability, and allowing the work to breathe naturally.

Kulturnest: How does your context - whether in Lebanon or as part of a diaspora - impact your work? What challenges and opportunities does it create?

ARDZIV: Being connected to Lebanon inevitably shapes my artistic perspective.

Living within a reality marked by instability, uncertainty, resilience, and emotional intensity creates a heightened sensitivity to human experience. There is a constant coexistence of beauty and fragility here, and I think that duality enters my work naturally.

At the same time, being part of a wider diasporic and multicultural experience creates another layer of reflection about identity, belonging, and memory. It allows me to move between personal and collective emotions, between rootedness and displacement.

Exhibiting internationally has also played an important role in shaping me as an artist.

Encountering different audiences, cultures, and artistic environments has expanded my understanding of how emotion and visual language can transcend borders. It showed me that deeply personal experiences can still resonate universally, regardless of cultural background.

Those experiences encouraged me to trust the emotional honesty of my work even more.

The challenges are real: limited resources, instability, and the emotional exhaustion that can come from living within difficult circumstances.

But these realities also create depth, authenticity, and urgency in artistic expression. They force artists to create not only from comfort, but from necessity and emotional truth.

Kulturnest: Looking ahead, what directions are you exploring or questioning in your practice? What would you like to evolve or preserve?

ARDZIV: Moving forward, I want to continue deepening the emotional and conceptual layers within my work while also experimenting more freely with scale, texture, and atmosphere.

I am interested in creating works that immerse viewers emotionally and psychologically rather than simply presenting an image.

I also want to explore new dialogues between memory, sound, space, and visual storytelling.

At the same time, I want to preserve the sincerity and emotional vulnerability that remain at the center of my practice.

What matters most to me is staying truthful to the emotional core of the work.

Techniques and forms may evolve, but I hope the human sensitivity behind the paintings always remains present.