Book Review | Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity

Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA FuturityBy Kristin Anahit CassPublished by Fifth Wheel Press In Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity, artist and photographer Kristin Anahit Cass carries on the legacy of Armenian Futurism, an artistic and literary movement that grapples with the traumas inflicted by genocide and colonialism while envisioning a future of justice and healing. She imagines the world that “could have been, indeed that could be,” in her words, if SWANA peoples had not been subjected to colonialism and genocide and dispersed across the world.  I look forward to being in conversation with Cass at the book launch of Reparations of the Heart on Friday, April 19, 2024 from 6-8 p.m., hosted by the Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Practice in New York. Reparations of the Heart moves chronologically between past, present and future. In part one, Ancestors, Cass photographs members of SWANA diasporas living in their ancestral homelands, free of colonial violence. In part two, The Republic of My Imagination, she depicts members of diverse SWANA communities, including Armenians, Assyrians and Yezidis, building a multicultural home in an Anatolia unravaged by genocide. In part three, A Planet of Our Own, she uses elements of science...