Project. I Had Left My Home Early in The Morning
2014—2017

What can I call home? The place where I was born? Or is home the address written in my passport? Or the city I dream of moving to? Perhaps it’s the place where the people I love live? 

Three days before my birth, on April 9, 1989, Soviet troops clashed with peaceful demonstrators who where calling for independence on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. Faced with a number of difficulties due to their Armenian citizenship, my parents decided it would be too hard to remain in Georgia. They returned to Armenia, to the city they had left in 1988 following a devastating earthquake. After several years of life in Vanadzor, my parents packed their things once again and set off. This time we traveled more than 7,000 kilometers and settled in the Russian Far East, on Sakhalin Island. Due to the hardships and instability of the 1990s, my parents made the decision to move to Sochi, the warmest part of the country.

In 2014, I began an autobiographical visual journey through the places that had once been my home. These homecomings had no fixed plan or mapped-out routes: in order to reconnect with the past, I first had to get lost. From spontaneous walks, encounters with family, and work with personal archives, the project I Left Home Early in the Morning was born. It still holds many gaps and unanswered questions, but I cherish this exploration as a first attempt to touch on the themes of forced migration and loss.