FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight: Rebecca Topakian
Join us on June 25 for the FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight featuring Rebecca Topakian.
Rebecca Topakian is a French-Armenian artist living between Paris region and Yerevan. After studying philosophy and geography, she turned to photography and graduated from the ENSP Arles in 2015. She is interested in defining identity through its invisible, mythological, and fictional dimensions.
For this talk, Topakian will present her photobook Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories.
Her starting point for the project is the unique story of her Armenian family, who lived in Turkey before her grandfather emigrated to France. This story is about the love of her great-grandparents – Garabed and Gulizar.
Topakian explored this part of her identity by choosing fiction and mythology. Bearing the love story of her ancestors in mind while she traveled and lived in Armenia, desire became the thread of this project: it is a desire for earth, ground, identity, but also for the other’s body acting almost as a mirror.
Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories will be on show at MAC VAL – Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val de Marne from 14 June till 4 January 2026 as part of the Forever Young group show.
About FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight:
Every two months, we’ll invite a photographer from the FUTURES platform to join us for an engaging online conversation about their artistic journey. This series offers a unique chance for audiences worldwide to hear directly from the artist, gaining insight into their practice, motivations, and creative processes.
We also hope to inspire the next generation of photographers, providing them with the opportunity to connect with artists who recently began their careers.
© Rebecca Topakian