Emily Mkrtichian
Salt Lake City, UT
Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary creative collaborator. Her evolving artistic practice reflects her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family, and centers the decolonized narratives of women, especially from the SWANA region, as well as a deep commitment to the healing power of relational, ethical, collaborative storytelling. Emily has been a Flaherty Seminar Fellow, a LA Arts Activation Fund recipient, A Locarno Film Festival development grant winner, a UnionDocs Summer Lab Fellow, a resident at the Yerevan Institute of Contemporary Art, and participated in the Torino Film Lab. Her first feature documentary film, There Was, There Was Not, just premiered at True/False Film Fest, and has been supported by Sundance Institute, IDA, Chicken & Egg Pictures and HotDocs. Her work includes the immersive, multimedia installation Luys i Luso, created in collaboration with Tigran Hamasyan, which has been exhibited in NYC (BRIC Arts), LA (Arts Activation fund recipient for public art), Istanbul (DEPO Gallery), Munich (Unterfahrt), Armenia, and Bulgaria (European Capital of Culture). She co-directed the sci-fi short Transmission (BFI Flare) as well as the short documentary Motherland (Full Frame Film Festival, Winner Best Documentary Short at Copenhagen International Film Festival).
Collaborators
Kamee Abrahamian, Emily Mkrtichian, Ensoule, 2021. Digital film. Photo by Margos Margossian.
Kamee Abrahamian, Emily Mkrtichian, Ensoule, 2021. Digital film. Photo by Margos Margossian.
Emily Mkrtichian, Alex Igidbashian, Natalia Sookias, Clément Destephen, Jacques-André Dupont, Luys i Luso, 2016. Digital Video. Photo courtesy Emily Mkrtichian.
Emily Mkrtichian, Alex Igidbashian, Natalia Sookias, Clément Destephen, Jacques-André Dupont, Luys i Luso, 2016. Digital Video. Photo courtesy Emily Mkrtichian.
Emily Mkrtichian, Alex Igidbashian, Natalia Sookias, Clément Destephen, Jacques-André Dupont, Luys i Luso, 2016. Courtesy Alex Igidbashian, Emily Mkrtichian.
Emily Mkrtichian, Alexandria Bombach, There Was, There Was Not, 2024. Courtesy Emily Mkrtichian.
Portals
Emily Mkrtichian and Kamee Abrahamian
For nearly a decade, Emily and Kamee have co-created speculative, multimedia worlds that center SWANA peoples and invite them to imagine, write, act, and build into new, visionary futures.
Artist BioEmily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker and multimedia artist whose work is deeply influenced by her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family. She explores radically personal and alternative archives, focusing on the SWANA region while emphasizing the transformative power of ethical, collaborative storytelling.
Artist BioKamee Abrahamian
Kamee is a queer SWANA artist, storyteller, producer, mother, waitress and witch whose work summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and justice.
Artist BioPortals is a collaborative media arts anthology that imagines and gathers the bio-mythographies of new mothers and caregivers in a multiversal, fragmented storyworld. Through collective storytelling and participatory world-creation, the project manifests as a short film anthology combined into a single speculative non-fiction film and a multimedia installation that will invite audiences into an experiential realization of the storyworld.
The Portals storyworld is based on a short-form memoir written by Kamee Abrahamian called “Queer Motherhood is Speculative Fiction.” It follows a first-person narrator as a multiverse portal rips through her body during labor, giving her the ability to glimpse into other versions of her life. The original narrative uses speculative fiction and multiverse travel to convey the inexpressible physical and emotional experience(s) of becoming a primary caregiver to an infant. Using this story as scaffolding, Portals will invite five other artists and filmmakers (who are mothers/primary caregivers) to create a short film from their own experiences and build into this world. Conceived independently, but workshopped and brought to life collectively, the larger filmic work transforms the personal into a collaborative endeavor, allowing for new ways to collectively express, share, remember and imagine bio-mythographies of motherhood and care.
The installation will be an experiential, three-dimensional manifestation of the storyworld, using mediums of video projection, set design, audio soundscapes, live performance, and the creation of textural and material ephemera from the world. Audiences will walk through, touch, and interact with elements of each narrative.
Emily Mkrtichian and Kamee Abrahamian
Salt Lake City, UT and Demorestville, Canada
For nearly a decade, Emily and Kamee have co-created speculative, multimedia storyworlds that center SWANA peoples and invite them to imagine, write, act, and build into these new spaces. Drawing from their experiences of displaced and persecuted lineages, ongoing conflict, and healing ancestral knowledge, their collaborative work seeks to imagine worlds where SWANA communities survive and thrive into new, visionary futures. These creations span narrative and documentary films, multimedia installations, theater, and audio storytelling. Collectively, their work has been nominated for a Pushcart award and received a Lambda award, and has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Torino Film Lab, Visions du Réel and the LA Public Arts Fund; it has been exhibited at BRIC Arts Media (NYC), DEPO Gallery (Istanbul), European Capital of Culture Festival (Bulgaria), and Yerevan Institute of Contemporary Art (Armenia). Their most recent film Transmission premiered at BFI FLARE and screened at multiple international film festivals.
Collaborators
Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker and multimedia artist whose work is deeply influenced by her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family. She explores radically personal and alternative archives, focusing on the SWANA region while emphasizing the transformative power of ethical, collaborative storytelling.
Kamee Abrahamian
Demorestville, Ontario, Canada
Kamee’s creative practice is collaborative, rooted in relational ethics of care, and oriented towards generative, visionary world-building. They have degrees in cinema, poli-sci, art therapy, and a PhD in community and liberation psychology. Their work spans across narrative & documentary film, visual & media art, staged & immersive performances, magazines, podcasts. workshops, festivals, and advocacy campaigns. Their projects have been supported by organizations across Canada, USA and Armenia, including Sundance, HotDocs and Catapult.
Kamee is also a Pushcart nominated writer, literary alumni at VONA and Banff Center for Arts, and Lambda-awarded theatre maker. Their short film Transmission (2019), the first Armenian sci-fi film known to date, premiered at BFI FLARE and their short doc Symptom (2024) is currently circulating at festivals.
Kamee recently published a children’s book, debuted a new mixed-media collection called Flesh, Immemorial, and is now developing multiple projects for the screen in collaboration with Emily Mkrtichian through Cazimi Studios.
Collaborators
Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker and multimedia artist whose work is deeply influenced by her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family. She explores radically personal and alternative archives, focusing on the SWANA region while emphasizing the transformative power of ethical, collaborative storytelling.