Zalfa Halabi Art Gallery is delighted to start off the summer season with a solo exhibition “A Roomful of People” by Janet Hakopian. The show will open on Thursday May 30th 2024 and will feature an array of both paintings and sculptures from the artist’s collection. Janet’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions starting in 1995, a multitude of collective exhibitions across the world, as well as several auctions. Her latest exhibition will run for three months over the summer until August 31st at the gallery and invites visitors not only to view the works but to create their own stories as they piece together the various figures and elements.

Janet Hakopian was born to an Armenian family in Iran. After graduating from high school she moved to Armenia where she obtained an MA in decorative applied art at the Yerevan State Institute of Fine Arts and Theatre. Janet then held her first exhibition “Cosmic Kingdom” in Tehran. After moving to Lebanon, she worked as a jewelry designer for several international companies and became the Director of Toros Roslin Art Academy at the Hamazkayin Center until 2011. In 2015 she began teaching drawing at the Lebanese American University. Throughout her career she has taken part in both collective and solo exhibitions in Lebanon, Armenia, Iran, Dubai, London, and America. Her works have also been auctioned off at the "LIKE" auction at the Emergeast gallery in Dubai and international auction house Bonham.

As an artist Janet Hakopian draws from her experience of being caught in between three distinct yet similar cultures. Each and every one of her pieces offers a glimpse into the social, and religious, realities that shaped her identity and the identities of women who live in the Middle East with all its problems and wonders. Each piece is composed of various layers and conveys the concept of the painting or sculpture. Hakopian's imagination explores and displays shape variations to communicate a strong composition. These shapes may be challenging but have the advantage of allowing the viewer to observe without feeling restricted or constrained.

As for Janet’s relationship with her work, it’s a very personal one, even more so with her sculptures that are based on the characters in her paintings. The artist states that she begins her day by greeting the figures in her paintings in her studio and sharing her thoughts with them. However the conversation has always been one sided and so she created sculptures based on the figures which allowed her an opportunity to engage with them differently. Simultaneously this provided the “people” in her paintings a new dimension to live in. This metamorphosis represents how we identify our reality within a constantly evolving society; mirrored by Janet’s figures as they struggle with new worlds and try to digest new and perplexing truths. While each of these characters experiences their own narrative, Janet explains that alone they are incomplete and that they seek out each other like pieces to a puzzle and together they bring new life into her studio.