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Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich


EIP: Tell us about your Lebanese / Armenian heritage and how it influences your artwork.
MURIEL: As a Canadian artist of Armenian, Egyptian and Lebanese descent, my paintings focus on genealogy, intergenerational trauma and historical violence. In my work, I create a narrative based on the history of my family; one of diaspora, immigration, and genocide. My maternal grandparents are survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. My grandfather lost his parents and thirteen siblings, who were massacred in 1915 in Mardin, Turkey. He and one brother survived and were exiled to Alexandria, Egypt, though their family originally came from Baghdad, Iraq. My grandmother also lost her parents and sister in Mardin, Turkey. She fled by boat and was exiled to Alexandria, where she lived in an Armenian orphanage. On my father’s side, my grandfather’s side have been in Alexandria, Egypt, since the late 1800s, though the family originally comes from Deir El Amar in Lebanon. On my grandmother’s side, there is also Syrian and Coptic Egyptian heritage in my paternal lineage.
My research is based on oral histories, photographic archives and objects bequeathed to me. I draw on archival records of family albums, memories, secret histories, gaps, silences or moments shared through oral interviews. I become a receptacle. I transform this knowledge and create narratives using memory and imagination. When stories and memories are subjected to time, the narratives become blurred, on the borderline between reality and fiction. My images serve as metaphors for the impact of intergenerational trauma. Decolonizing is about recognizing and naming the worldview forced, reinforced, and enforced by this colonial experiment and picking up the teachings and practices of our ancestors. The work speaks of ancestral grief. Such grief work invites an ongoing practice of going deep, caring, and listening. Dealing with the undigested anguish of our ancestors frees us to live our present lives. In turn, it can also relieve ancestral suffering in the other world.
EIP: What did the very beginning of your artist journey look like?
MURIEL: Pursuing an artistic path is something I could never have imagined, especially with parents who immigrated from Lebanon and Egypt and had to rebuild their lives from the ground up. I was raised to follow a traditional path, becoming either a doctor or dentist. Instead, I ended up working for companies in Silicon Valley and later for nonprofits like UNICEF. But something always felt off. Due to my own trauma and a lot of dissociation, it took a long time to reconnect and find my path. Therapy and incredible meditation teachers like Daryl Lynn Ross and Pascal Auclair were instrumental in that journey. I never gave up on searching for something that resonated more deeply, and slowly, it was revealed to me. My spiritual practice is deeply intertwined with my art; they support and enhance each other in a symbiotic way. Coming from a faith-oriented background on my maternal side, I grew up attending Armenian church every Sunday. Alongside this, I pursued my own spiritual exploration by studying Buddhist philosophy and participating in extensive meditation retreats,
including one six-week retreat in silence. These experiences have profoundly shaped my worldview and way of life. My paintings are an extension of my sensitivity, living through me as I create. I feel profoundly guided and supported by my ancestors during the painting process.
EIP: How would you compare your artwork from when you just started to your work in the present moment? How did the Egyptian influence in your current works come about?
MURIEL: The real turning point came when I embarked on my MFA journey. Here’s how it unfolded…
At the start, my focus was on understanding and reconstructing the historical memory of the Armenian genocide through both personal and collective perspectives. I wanted my artistic research to generate new forms of knowledge. Through painting, I explored the potential of rebuilding personal and collective memory around the traumatic aftermath of the genocide. I also aimed for the work to play a political role, using humor to tell an alternative narrative rooted in my own life and field experiences.
I engaged in oral history-based research, delving into matrilineal stories of mothers and daughters within the context of family histories. My mother’s oral narratives became a gateway to using the familiar as a tool for uncovering the unknown. I sought to link personal and familiar experiences to something broader—collective, social, and far beyond my individual story. My mother, Anahid, shares her name with the Armenian goddess of fertility, healing, wisdom, and water. This prompted me to ask: Does the study of goddesses in Armenian mythology and other myths help us understand the dynamics between women, power, and spirituality? What layers of memory and patriarchal violence can be uncovered and discussed?
My iconography evolved dramatically in my second year, during what I call the “summer of sorrows” in 2021. My father became seriously ill and lost the ability to speak. His voice’s disappearance urged me to understand where he came from. His slow decline stirred a deep need within me to integrate my Egyptian heritage into my work. From an early age, I was exposed to Ancient Egyptian art, including painting, sculpture, and papyrus drawings, through my paternal grandparents who were still living in Alexandria during my childhood. I also realized that Alexandria, Egypt was where my maternal grandparents sought exile from Mardin. Egyptian iconography became my safe space, shaping the next series of paintings.
My Armenian-Egyptian-Lebanese heritage, along with the long- standing conflicts between the West and the Middle East, deeply influence my work. I’m interested in critiquing the ongoing forces of colonization and highlighting the value of cultural artifacts that have been lost, looted, or destroyed, as well as the human toll of continued violence. I see my paintings as a transformative force, capable of moving us into spaces where we can reclaim our power.

{
"article":
{
"title" : "Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich",
"author" : "Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-muriel",
"date" : "2025-02-04 15:33:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/muriel-3.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "EIP: Tell us about your Lebanese / Armenian heritage and how it influences your artwork.MURIEL: As a Canadian artist of Armenian, Egyptian and Lebanese descent, my paintings focus on genealogy, intergenerational trauma and historical violence. In my work, I create a narrative based on the history of my family; one of diaspora, immigration, and genocide. My maternal grandparents are survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. My grandfather lost his parents and thirteen siblings, who were massacred in 1915 in Mardin, Turkey. He and one brother survived and were exiled to Alexandria, Egypt, though their family originally came from Baghdad, Iraq. My grandmother also lost her parents and sister in Mardin, Turkey. She fled by boat and was exiled to Alexandria, where she lived in an Armenian orphanage. On my father’s side, my grandfather’s side have been in Alexandria, Egypt, since the late 1800s, though the family originally comes from Deir El Amar in Lebanon. On my grandmother’s side, there is also Syrian and Coptic Egyptian heritage in my paternal lineage.My research is based on oral histories, photographic archives and objects bequeathed to me. I draw on archival records of family albums, memories, secret histories, gaps, silences or moments shared through oral interviews. I become a receptacle. I transform this knowledge and create narratives using memory and imagination. When stories and memories are subjected to time, the narratives become blurred, on the borderline between reality and fiction. My images serve as metaphors for the impact of intergenerational trauma. Decolonizing is about recognizing and naming the worldview forced, reinforced, and enforced by this colonial experiment and picking up the teachings and practices of our ancestors. The work speaks of ancestral grief. Such grief work invites an ongoing practice of going deep, caring, and listening. Dealing with the undigested anguish of our ancestors frees us to live our present lives. In turn, it can also relieve ancestral suffering in the other world.EIP: What did the very beginning of your artist journey look like?MURIEL: Pursuing an artistic path is something I could never have imagined, especially with parents who immigrated from Lebanon and Egypt and had to rebuild their lives from the ground up. I was raised to follow a traditional path, becoming either a doctor or dentist. Instead, I ended up working for companies in Silicon Valley and later for nonprofits like UNICEF. But something always felt off. Due to my own trauma and a lot of dissociation, it took a long time to reconnect and find my path. Therapy and incredible meditation teachers like Daryl Lynn Ross and Pascal Auclair were instrumental in that journey. I never gave up on searching for something that resonated more deeply, and slowly, it was revealed to me. My spiritual practice is deeply intertwined with my art; they support and enhance each other in a symbiotic way. Coming from a faith-oriented background on my maternal side, I grew up attending Armenian church every Sunday. Alongside this, I pursued my own spiritual exploration by studying Buddhist philosophy and participating in extensive meditation retreats,including one six-week retreat in silence. These experiences have profoundly shaped my worldview and way of life. My paintings are an extension of my sensitivity, living through me as I create. I feel profoundly guided and supported by my ancestors during the painting process.EIP: How would you compare your artwork from when you just started to your work in the present moment? How did the Egyptian influence in your current works come about?MURIEL: The real turning point came when I embarked on my MFA journey. Here’s how it unfolded…At the start, my focus was on understanding and reconstructing the historical memory of the Armenian genocide through both personal and collective perspectives. I wanted my artistic research to generate new forms of knowledge. Through painting, I explored the potential of rebuilding personal and collective memory around the traumatic aftermath of the genocide. I also aimed for the work to play a political role, using humor to tell an alternative narrative rooted in my own life and field experiences.I engaged in oral history-based research, delving into matrilineal stories of mothers and daughters within the context of family histories. My mother’s oral narratives became a gateway to using the familiar as a tool for uncovering the unknown. I sought to link personal and familiar experiences to something broader—collective, social, and far beyond my individual story. My mother, Anahid, shares her name with the Armenian goddess of fertility, healing, wisdom, and water. This prompted me to ask: Does the study of goddesses in Armenian mythology and other myths help us understand the dynamics between women, power, and spirituality? What layers of memory and patriarchal violence can be uncovered and discussed?My iconography evolved dramatically in my second year, during what I call the “summer of sorrows” in 2021. My father became seriously ill and lost the ability to speak. His voice’s disappearance urged me to understand where he came from. His slow decline stirred a deep need within me to integrate my Egyptian heritage into my work. From an early age, I was exposed to Ancient Egyptian art, including painting, sculpture, and papyrus drawings, through my paternal grandparents who were still living in Alexandria during my childhood. I also realized that Alexandria, Egypt was where my maternal grandparents sought exile from Mardin. Egyptian iconography became my safe space, shaping the next series of paintings.My Armenian-Egyptian-Lebanese heritage, along with the long- standing conflicts between the West and the Middle East, deeply influence my work. I’m interested in critiquing the ongoing forces of colonization and highlighting the value of cultural artifacts that have been lost, looted, or destroyed, as well as the human toll of continued violence. I see my paintings as a transformative force, capable of moving us into spaces where we can reclaim our power."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
,
{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
}
,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}