The solo exhibition called “Peace of Art” (www.PeaceofArt.org) of the Armenian-American painter Daniel Varoujan Hejinian opened at the National Gallery of Armenia on September 18 in the frame of the 5th Armenia-Diaspora Conference organized by the RA Ministry of Diaspora dedicated to the 23rd anniversary of Armenian Independence and to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Greeting the painter and those presents, the RA Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan noted, “By naming their son after the great writer Daniel Varoujan, the painter’s parents raised a talented artist by the name of Daniel Varoujan Hejinian, and while writer Daniel Varoujan depicted the sorrow and desires of the Armenian people in his works, painter Daniel Varoujan Hejinian did the same with his paintbrush.”

The RA Minister of Diaspora drew the participants’ attention to Hejinian’s bronze cross-stone called “Hands of a Mother”, which is dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million martyrs of the Armenian Genocide. The cross-stone has been placed in front of the municipality of Lowell for everyone to see and has been named the “Mother Cross-Stone” since the stone symbolizes the body, that is, the “Homeland”, and the bronze symbolizes the spirit, that is, “Diaspora”. 

Sheriff of Middlesex County of the State of Massachusetts Peter Koutoujian also greeted those presents and expressed gratitude to the RA Ministry of Diaspora for the invitation to participate in the opening of exhibition in the Homeland. The Armenian sheriff proudly spoke about Daniel Varoujan Hejinian’s highly artistic paintings, which are devoted to the Armenian Genocide and show the world the crime perpetrated by the Turks in the early 20th century. 

At the end of the opening ceremony Daniel Varoujan Hejinian expressed gratitude to the RA Ministry of Diaspora and particularly to Minister Hranush Hakobyan for turning his dream of holding a solo exhibition in the Homeland into a reality.