Portal Fire: Shrine of the Torchbearer presents new work by the Detroit-based artist Levon Kafafian. Based on a forthcoming graphic novel of the same name, Kafafian combines their textile-based practice with the speculative worldbuilding of science fiction to take visitors on a journey over one thousand years into the future: to a place and time where digital technology has ceased to exist. Through a series of immersive vignettes, we enter the magical, imaginary world of Azadistan, a sophisticated and highly stratified civilization where textiles have become symbolic markers of class and power and act as a narrative guide to the nuances of society. 

Positioned as a dialogue with their ancestral roots, Kafafian’s vision of Azadistan shares a distant yet recognizable relationship with the history and culture of a region known as the Armenian Highlands. Through the installation and display of Kafafian’s intricately crafted soft sculptures, wall hangings, carpets, and costumes, Portal Fire: Shrine of the Torchbearer depicts a cavernous Shrine reminiscent of those found under the ancient city of Ani (880s – 1025 AC). A place of deep spiritual significance, the Shrine is tightly guarded by the ‘torchbearers,’ members of the ruling class, as it holds the lost knowledge of the digital past and the key to the liberation of Azadistan’s people. In Kafafian’s words, Portal Fire is a story that “asserts a future beyond survival for Armenian and other Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) cultures into the messy, queer realm of self-determination after liberation.”

Portal Fire: Shrine of the Torchbearer demonstrates Kafafian’s creative approach to channeling the evolving realities of the Armenian diasporic experience. Inspired by the concept of ‘Armeno-Futurism,’ the exhibition centers a commitment to envisioning expansive futures in the wake of the historical and ongoing loss of ancestral Armenian homelands. Kafafian explores the interconnected role of speculative thinking and visionary storytelling as a way of asserting individual and collective agency and offers new narratives for embracing a cultural identity beyond existing systems of power and dominion.