Of Armenian descent, Sarine Semerjian was born in Toronto and raised across the culturally rich landscapes of Syria and Lebanon. A self-taught multidisciplinary artist, her practice has been shaped by the layered histories, traditions, and lived experiences of the places she has called home.
Working across painting, drawing, performance, and movement, Semerjian explores the body as a site of memory, perception, and transformation. Rooted in intuition and embodied experience, her works emerge through gesture, movement, and process, allowing subconscious associations to surface organically. Rather than illustrating predetermined narratives, she creates poetic visual languages that invite viewers to reflect on their own relationship to identity, place, and belonging.
Her recent body of work imagines the body as a living landscape, where fragments of Armenia, Syria, and Lebanon converge into symbolic terrains. Recurring motifs—including Armenian khachkars, cedar trees, and pomegranates—weave together personal experience with broader questions of ancestry, continuity, and cultural inheritance. Existing somewhere between memory and imagination, these works blur the boundaries between the physical and the psychological, the personal and the collective.
Extending beyond the canvas, Semerjian's interdisciplinary practice incorporates performance and movement as integral forms of expression. By bringing together visual art and the physical body, she creates immersive experiences that foreground intuition, presence, and emotional resonance.
