Camille Lévêque

Camille Lévêque belongs to the generation of Armenians born in France, the grandchildren of survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Her work explores an inheritance marked by two extremes—adoration and rejection—both passionate responses fueled by pain and imagination. For the Armenian diaspora, the past’s weight is compounded by Turkey’s denial of the genocide, blocking collective mourning.

Through travels between Armenia and France, and conversations with peers, Lévêque questions individual and collective identity, trauma transmission, fiction in family narratives, and breaking free from imposed self-representation. Using archives, studio photography, and reconstructed stories, she crafts a speculative family history where memory, diaspora, and personal mythology intertwine, emphasizing eyes (or their absence) to center vision and perspective.

Her protean research into the identities of immigrant descendants navigates past and present, reality and fiction, representing plural diasporic identities built from constantly negotiated images. Tsavt Tanem (I take away your pain) frames this exploration of empathy amid inherited complexity.