Dispersion

Guests: Chicago-based painter and visual artist Jackie Kazarian, and Armenian-Dutch biodesigner and artist Shushanik Droshakiryan.In this episode, our guests explore how their art emerges from personal curiosities and lived experiences engaging with Armenian narratives, rather than representing a singular collective view. They reflect on how Armenian identity is a continuously reconstructed phenomenon that is shaped through their evolving relationships between art, homeland, and themselves across time and different mediums.Biographies:Jackie Kazarian is a Chicago-based visual artist working primarily in painting, installation and video.  She received a BS in Zoology from Duke University and a MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has held numerous solo exhibitions, including New York, Chicago, Miami, Spain, Syria and Kuwait. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Illinois State Museum, Rockford Art Museum, Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, Chicago Public Library, and the United States Embassy, Armenia. In 2019, Jackie received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Armenian Behavioral Science Association. She is a 2008 fellow of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media at Columbia College Chicago and has served two tours as an art envoy for the U.S. State Department, presenting workshops, lectures and exhibitions in Kuwait and Syria. In 2015, Kazarian created a monumental painting to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Armenian genocide.  Shushanik Droshakiryan is an Armenian-Dutch biodesigner and artist based in Amsterdam. Her creative journey began with traditional Armenian carpet weaving at the National Centre for Aesthetics in Yerevan, where the material and ornamental logic of Armenian carpets formed her artistic thinking. Today, that foundation drives her biodesign practice in which Armenian cultural heritage is not preserved but activated as regenerative design intelligence. Her biomaterial systems do not merely reference Armenian identity — they are rooted in it, drawing from the logic of Armenian landscape,material memory, and cultural form.She is the founder of Venus in Fury, an Amsterdam-based biodesign lab, working at the intersection of material science, craft, and next-generation biomaterial systems. Her signature materials, SUF, a translucent seaweed-based bio-garment inspired by G.I. Gurdjieff, and ARTSAKH, a carbon-based bio-leather registered under EU trademark droshakiryan ®, each draw their identity from the Armenian land, memory, and heritage.Find us on all your favourite social media platforms: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dispersionpodcast/?hl=enSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YnJI7YEgyyxVXn4qJWeIfApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dispersion/id1604466506 Acast: https://shows.acast.com/dispersionAmazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/be249e46-4f77-41f9-8c41-9c62cfc1ecd6/dispersion

Guests: Award-winning international film and stage actress, Arsinee Khanjian and esteemed playwright, director, and stage actor, Hrant Alianak. In this episode, our guests share their journeys as diasporan Armenians from Lebanon and Sudan, respectively, to reflect on how their distinct upbringings shape their Armenian storytelling. They discuss how diaspora challenges traditional notions of Armenianness, the role of accents as markers of otherness, and their shared history navigating Canada’s film and theatre scenes as young performance artists from the 1970s onward.Biographies:Hrant Alianak (Writer/Director/Actor/Producer) made his debut as a writer in 1972 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto with his play TANTRUMS. He is best known for his plays LUCKY STRIKE, THE BLUES and THE WALLS OF AFRICA which was nominated for 8 Dora Awards and received 3, including Best Production. Alianak started producing in 1992 and formed his company ALIANAK THEATRE PRODUCTIONS. Amongst the plays he has produced and directed, were several Armenian themed plays including A CROOKED MAN and BEAST ON THE MOON, starring Arsinee Khanjian. He has also completed two feature films, A TRIP TO THE ISLAND and BURNING, BURNING, both of which he wrote, directed and co-produced.Arsinee Khanjian was born in Lebanon to Armenian parents in Beirut, and has lived in Canada since 1975. Khanjian grew up speaking Armenian at home, Arabic and French in school. Her family moved to Montreal when she was seventeen, where she studied theatre at the Conservatoire Lasalle, earned her B.A. in Spanish and French from Concordia University, then subsequently graduated with a Masters in Political Science from University of Toronto. She has starred in numerous Canadian and European films (including The Lark Farm by the Taviani brothers and Ararat by Atom Egoyan), performed on stage and has directed her own work in Berlin. In 2006 she was awarded the »Genie Award« for best actress Ararat and the Gemini Award previously for her role in the CBC production of More Tears in 1999.Find us on all your favourite social media platforms: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dispersionpodcast/?hl=enSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YnJI7YEgyyxVXn4qJWeIfApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dispersion/id1604466506 Acast: https://shows.acast.com/dispersionAmazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/be249e46-4f77-41f9-8c41-9c62cfc1ecd6/dispersion

In this special episode of Dispersion, host Jen Haddow speaks with Dr. Rajesh C. Shukla, Associate Professor at Saint Paul University and guest editor of the upcoming Diaspora journal issue, titled Immigrant Diaspora and the Changing Dimensions of Canadian Multiculturalism about reimagining Canadian multiculturalism through the lens of social connections. Reflecting on his own migration journey and academic work, Dr. Shukla explores how belonging and identity shape the immigrant experience in Canada. This conversation offers a first look into Season 4 of Dispersion and its focus on the evolving realities of Canadian multiculturalism. Tune in for an inspiring discussion on how civic life in Canada can be redefined through sympathy, community, and friendship.

This special live episode of Dispersion, recorded at the Toronto Reference Library on March 28, 2025, brings together three distinguished voices from the Canadian media industry. Through candid storytelling and thoughtful reflection, each guest offers a personal lens on navigating the media landscape—unpacking how their identities have shaped both the challenges they've faced and the opportunities they've found. Though their paths differ, their shared experiences of self-discovery and professional growth will resonate with many. Tune in as they explore what it means to move through the world of media while negotiating questions of identity, representation, and belonging.

In this episode, guests will explore their relationship with their own identity in relation to their home state. What sets this apart from other episodes, is that their homeland was not, or still hasn’t been, recognized as an independent state. We explore how this fight for independence and recognition has shaped the guests into who they are today, and why they may have a different relationship with their homeland than other Diaspora groups. The two cases represented in this episode are Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo.

This episode explores the push and pull factors of immigration in the lives of our guests as well as the notion of brain drain. Joining us for this episode are Azadeh Dastmalchi and Ifrah Arif.  Dastmalchi is the CEO and Co-Founder of VitalTracer, a medical startup that designs smart wearable medical devices. Arif currently works as a Senior Policy and Program Advisor at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

This episode explores the diverse experiences of motherhood in Canada’s Diaspora communities. It navigates the nuances and realities of immigrant women, their experiences, their journeys in Canada, as well as the vital role that mothers play in shaping identities and culture for the next generation. Joining us for this episode are Dr. Jacqueline Getfield and  Sharon Findlay, both mothers, and experienced both personally and/or professionally on the subject of diasporic motherhood.

This episode explores what it looks like to find connections in one's hostland in the cozy confines of a small town. What brings that unmistakable sense of home in such places, and how do these communities and the diasporas within them, make their mark on the towns they’ve adopted? Sharing his experiences with us is Tareq Hadhad, Owner/Founder of Peace by Chocolate and a Syrian Refugee in Small Town Nova Scotia.