Lilit Avakian
archiver, mentor, artist
I grew up in the deep South of Louisiana, the daughter of immigrant parents who fled the troubled aftermath of the Armenian Genocide.
Raised at a distance from my extended family, I grew up holding questions most children don't have words for ~ questions about belonging, about cultural identity, and that internal knowing that buzzes beneath the skin.
The question that stayed with me longest: How do I preserve and pass down the knowledge of my lineage when I am so far away from home?
Through research and artistic expression, I have grown to deeply appreciate the un-captured beauty of Home.
My work is for those with wandering questions, curiosities around their roots, and those craving a gentle nudge towards using art as a vessel to connect with their creative genius.
It wasn't until I visited my homeland for the first time that something shifted.
In that encounter with place, I began to feel the seed of knowledge that had always been within me, patiently waiting.
Every meal was a feast, every conversation was 10x louder than normal, 24/7 Facetime calls to over seas relatives, and a blend of Armenian and Russian language I could never quite fully grasp.
IN FALL
an eight week virtual residency —
You have been living a life worth archiving.
As an Armenian artist, I aim to investigate the essence of unspoken human relation through movement, poetry, land, and sensational exploration.
With support from my collection of living archives, I develop works that embody philosophical, sociological, and psychological findings of a diaspora woman on the road.
The unity of research, contemplation, and sensation actively guides the way I process my representations of the unspoken, natural intelligence within, and it’s relation to historical and contemporary expressions.
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I was born to Armenian immigrants in the deep south of Louisiana. At age 9, I found myself relocated to Chicago where I spent my teenage years. After moving out at 17, I acclimated myself to life as a solo woman on the road.
My love for exploring the road less traveled has gifted me a creative edge in the way I mentor, facilitate, and document my story.
What followed was years of informed research, artistic immersion, and cross-cultural exposure, all organized around a deeper question: What does it mean to inherit interrupted knowledge and how does it shape the way we sense and define the world around us?
I began building answers through experience. Immersive gatherings, online training programs, non-linear processes, ancestral research, intuitive experimentation. Through years of trial and error, I built a moving stage — a living space for others to reconnect, experiment, and blend the techniques that hold the complexity of inherited genetic memory.
At the center of my work is a belief that artistic expression is not supplemental to any living system, it is essential to it. And underneath that belief, two questions I keep returning to:
How can history and contemporary life function as continuous systems, rather than a separated past and present?
And where can we learn to work with, not against, the challenges brought upon us by displacement?
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We talk about beginnings as if they appear from nothing. But a seed arrives already carrying everything it needs. I often share this poem I wrote —
I am
of the seed
of the pomegranate
I am.
It captures the feeling of growing up far away from your elders, from the land of your people, and receiving knowledge that has been shattered into bits and spread far and wide.
When I really began to write poetry, I noticed my handwriting shift. Almost as if someone else was writing through me.
Each season, we gather online to go on a rite of passage. We collect, gather, experiment, and research with different mediums. We make something from our core, something that moves others, something to archive our life.
Current Offerings
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Every culture on earth has named the same three-part structure for transformation.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell called it separation, initiation, and return. The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep called it the liminal threshold ~ the in-between space where the old self dissolves before the new one emerges. In indigenous traditions it was marked by going into the wilderness, by fasting, by making something with your hands, by being witnessed by the community upon return.
What all of these share is this: a rite of passage is never about learning something new. It is about becoming someone new through direct experience.
For your residency, eight weeks of collecting, gathering, and making is structurally identical to the oldest rites of passage humans have ever practiced.
For eight weeks you will move through the season with intention ~ gathering what it offers, making something from what you find, and building a living archive of your own intelligence and experience.
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Private Mentoring + Resourcing + Unlimited Voice Notes
Armenian Diaspora Resourcing Session
30 Minute Energy + Nervous System Refresh
Two-Hour Conscious Connected Breathwork
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Available to join retreats, immersive experiences, festivals, intimate events, corporate retreats, and virtual containers.
Offerings include:
Creative Photography Sessions | inquire for pricing - beginning at $300
Contemplate: The Art of Storytelling Workshop | one hour | $40 per person | $200 minimum
Roots: A Movement + Poetry Workshop | two hours | $50 per person | $300 minimum
Depth: A Conscious Connected Breathwork Workshop for Presence | two hours | $50 per person | $300 minimum
“If words did not exist, how would you express the essence of language and culture in relation to belonging?”