Listening to the Paintings of Serj Tankian
“I see music and visual art as extensions of the same soul. When I paint, I’m composing. When I compose, I’m painting,” Tankian said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic. “Each informs the other in ways words cannot express.”
“The whole idea of musically composed paintings is something I’ve been interested in for a long time,” Tankian continued. “As an artist, I’ve always wanted to go to an exhibition, put on headphones, and listen to a piece of music, just like films.”
Visitors to the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts, can experience the Grammy Award-winning System of a Down vocalist’s vision in a new exhibition, The Art of Disruption: The Art and Impact of Serj Tankian, that opened this month and will remain on view through February. The gallery features a series of Tankian’s original abstract paintings and their accompanying musical clips, as well as video installations, poems, and artifacts.
Viewers can also download the Arloopa app — which Tankian developed with an Armenian designer — point their phone at a painting, and listen to orchestral arrangements of keyboards, guitars, and violins that Tankian composed to accompany each piece. The selections range from one to 24 minutes, but most are the length of an average pop song.
“Museums are relatively silent when you’re viewing work outside of an event, but when you utilize these compositions that he created, it’s not silent,” Jason Sohigian, the museum’s executive director, told Hyperallergic. “It’s an experience you’re hearing and seeing at the same time.”
Tankian had the idea of coupling musical compositions with paintings for several years. He thought about writing music for other artists’ paintings, but it didn’t give him as much joy as pairing his music with his own work.
“One day, I just thought to myself, ‘I have this composition and I really want to paint.’ How do I make this work?” Tankian said. “Luckily I liked my first painting. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have continued.”
The museum has long showcased the work of contemporary artists who reinterpret the story of the Armenian diaspora and the ramifications of the nation’s century-old genocide that reverberate today.
The Beirut-born rock star first became acquainted with the museum after seeing its display of Jack Kevorkian’s artworks in 2011, while he was in town for a production of Prometheus Bound, a musical which he had scored.
That started a conversation with Sohigian about his own work, which would later include his memoir, Down with the System (2024).
“Serj had started painting, and he also came out with his memoir, where he put out a lot of stuff about his life story and his involvement with music,” Sohigian said. “He started a gallery on his own in Los Angeles that exhibited his work, and he has also shown in New Zealand.”
Ryann Casey, a New Jersey-based artist who curated the exhibition, said Tankian emphasized the interconnectedness of his poetry, music, and visual art, and the meditative aspect of making each of them.
“I don’t often get a chance to curate musicians,” she said. “Armenian history is very important to me, and seeing someone express that history and himself through these three different modes was an interesting challenge.”
Tankian’s works may not be overtly political, but they carry quiet echoes of genocide recognition, environmental justice, and cultural identity, with titles such as“Music Is a Doorway to the Truth,” “Ethnic Cause,” and “Violent Violins.” His poetry explores connections to his activism with lines about yearning for peace.
“I don’t think any of us have shied away from that activism,” Casey said. “Hopefully, people look at those through different lenses.”
