Front Room Gallery is proud to present “Her Memory, A Metropolis,” a solo exhibition featuring works by Linda Ganjian. Ganjian’s work, comprising collages and patterned landscapes, embodies a fusion of architectural and sculptural elements deeply influenced by her Middle Eastern heritage. Inspired by the ornamental patterns seen in traditional carpets, reliquaries, manuscripts and the intricate architectural details of temples and mosques, Ganjian’s pieces convey complex narratives rooted in communal histories.

Her Hands, My Hands evokes both a cityscape and a topographical map, intertwining personal history with cultural symbolism. The piece serves as a landscape of memories honoring the artist’s grandmother—an Armenian immigrant from Istanbul, a renowned seamstress, and a devout woman. Merging the aesthetics of medieval reliquaries with urban planning, Ganjian creates dense compositions of miniature "plazas" formed from hundreds of small elements, like monuments in tribute.

The work reflects her grandmother’s religious devotion through imagery, patterns, and text drawn from antique prayer books she inherited. This intricate three-dimensional collage incorporates materials such as mannequin hands, velvet, wood, reproduced texts, polymer clay, and sewing pins. Red velvet and gold accents echo the aesthetic of the Orthodox Church, while the physical structure of the prayer book often informs the architectural layout. Dressmaking patterns—from publications like Burda Magazine—serve as maps, alongside zippers, pins, and button-like clay sculptures and found objects.

In Ganjian’s collage series, “Future Monasteries,” she has created a devotional space that merges medieval and futuristic elements. The structures in these works intentionally oscillate between architecture, altars, totems, and diagrams. These meticulously constructed, symmetrical compositions evoke the architectural grandeur of sacred spaces while projecting a vision of speculative, futuristic devotion. Drawing from the visual language of Eastern Orthodox reliquaries and Byzantine iconography, the work fuses spiritual symbolism with mechanical precision, creating a hybrid environment that is at once devotional and industrial.

The compositions are dominated by mirrored structures suggestive of cathedral spires, circuitry, and ritual altars. Repetitive radial motifs and vaulted forms reference rose windows and sacred geometry, while the inclusion of photographic imagery and textured paper introduces elements of memory and cultural layering. Interlaced blue and red conduits traverse the piece like vascular or electrical systems.

Through the integration of historical motifs and contemporary materials, Ganjian constructs a contemplative “monastic” space—one that questions the boundaries between past and future, handmade and engineered, sacred and secular.

These collages also reference her grandmother, weaving personal history with artistic expression. Some aspects of the collages, such as the vine-like forms and use of gold, are reminiscent of medieval Armenian manuscripts, while other shapes and line-work reference art-deco modernism, carpet patterns, computer networks, etc. This blend of past and future, personal and cultural, imbues her collages with rich, multifaceted symbolism.

Linda Ganjian is a Queens, NYC-based artist who works in a variety of materials, from clay to cement to paper. Her work has been exhibited in New York and abroad. Some exhibition highlights include: Islip Art Museum, NY; Grandchildren at Depo, Istanbul; Artspace, New Haven, CT; National Academy of Design; Socrates Sculpture Park; Queens Museum; Storefront for Art and Architecture; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and Stedelijk museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, Holland. She has received grants from: the Queens Council on the Arts; Pollack-Krasner Foundation; Artslink; and fellowships to: MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. She completed a public art commission for the NYC School Construction Authority in 2014 through the NYC Percent for Art program and the NYC MTA in 2016. In 2019, she was a QCA ArtPort resident at LaGuardia Airport. Her illustrations of Queens landscapes were translated into ceramic tiles for the restrooms of JFK Terminal 8. She received her B.A. from Bard College and her MFA from Hunter College CUNY. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens where she founded the artist talk series JH Art Talks in 2016.